Make money blogging

By Kim Komando

You've probably heard of people turning their blogs into moneymaking machines. Maybe you want to copy their success.

Well, you can make money with your blog. However, there are a few things you must know first.

Some bloggers claim to earn thousands of dollars a month. For most, blogging simply provides supplemental income. It's good to aim high, but have reasonable expectations.

Getting startedYou can make money from advertisements, affiliate programs and pay-per-post programs. Before you sign up for any of these, get your blog up and going.

Pick a topic about which you are passionate. Otherwise, you'll quickly run out of steam — and readers. You can sign up for a free blog with Blogger, WordPress or LiveJournal.com. Or, put the blog on your own site.

Revenue programs will want to see your work before you join. Some only need to read a couple posts. Others want to see a few months' work.

Most advertisers will reject certain types of sites. Hate speech, porn and promotion of illegal activities are no-nos.

Google's AdSense places targeted text ads in small boxes on Web pages. These ads are ubiquitous on the Internet.

Google provides you with code that you place on your blog. The ads displayed are based on the contents of the page. These ads work best on specialized pages.

The look of Google's ads is customizable. You control the color scheme and placement. You can also block ads from certain sites.

Your profit may be based on page views. The more people that see your page, the more you make. But most advertisers pay based on clicks. When someone clicks an ad, you earn a certain amount.

Google is tight-lipped about what it pays. Users are forbidden from discussing payments.
Google takes fraud seriously. Don't do anything to inflate your page views or ad clicks. Your account could be suspended. Or you could be sued.

Affiliate programsAffiliate programs are perfect for blogs. When you mention a product, you can link to it on a shopping site. If your visitors buy the product through your site, you earn commissions.
Affiliate payouts generally offer higher payouts than other programs. At the high end, you can earn 10% or more of sales.

Affiliate programs let you customize the ads. You can list popular products or use search boxes. You can also place links directly in your site content.

Commission Junction and LinkShare handle many websites' affiliate programs. With one account, you can run ads from many different advertisers. You'll do best with ads that are relevant to your topic.

Pay-per-post opportunities
Some advertisers offer pay-per-post opportunities. You may receive, say, $10 to review a product on your blog.

Generally, your blog must be several months old with a readership to qualify. Also, your site may need to be about a certain topic.

The post must stay up on your site for 30 days or so. The advertiser checks to make sure you fulfill the requirements before you're paid.

ReviewMe, PayPerPost and Blogitive.com are three sites that offer these opportunities. Some have disclosure requirements. But I'm still not fond of these programs. Your readers may desert you if they think you are shilling for products.

Kim Komando's nationally syndicated radio show is working with the military to provide U.S. soldiers in Iraq with necessities to make their tours of duty more comfortable. Find out more at www.komando.com/operationkomando.

Blogging for Profit Begins With a Long Term Plan

by Bo Gosta Sandkvist

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.

Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you. However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isnt easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to market your blog effectively.

Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so dont skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site. To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic.

Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight. Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit. Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period.

To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

How to Earn Money From your Own Blog

By Andrew

For starters, what is a blog? In general terms, it is a sort of interactive, regularly updated online journal. A blog owner is called a blogger, the activity of keeping a blog is called blogging, and the blogging community and everything related to blogging is collectively known as the blogosphere.
How are blogs created? There are several options. The cost-free way is to start a blog at one of the countless free blog services, such as the Google service called blogger. Another option is to use one of the free blog scripts and install it at a paid or free hosting service. Such free blog scripts are also numerous, the most popular of them being wordpress. It is also possible to sign up for a paid hosting service with an already installed wordpress blog, but this service is somewhat costlier.

Now let's assume that we already have a blog. The next question is: Where do we get content? Choose the subject for your blog. It may be your professional occupation or hobby. In any case, you must have solid knowledge of the subject. For instance, if you are a proctologist, you may write about hemorrhoids, their treatment, prevention and suchlike as long as these are not scientific articles, but materials written in layman's language. To give you a more practical example, if your hobby is dogs, write about them and people will enjoy it. There is another way to get content. The web has many services offering free articles. All you have to do is select the most interesting ones and publish them. In this way you can quickly fill your blog with content.
Moving on to the question of promoting your blog, it is worth noting that blogs are better indexed by search engines than ordinary web sites due to the specifics of the algorithm used in blogs. For instance, a new article in a well-promoted blog may appear on the search engine results page already on the following day. Of course, this requires registration in special catalogs devoted to blogs, which is what you will do next. Another way is to publish articles with a link to your blog. There are also services meant for just this purpose.

But most importantly, a search engine needs external links to your blog from other web sites. These should be good links generating heavy traffic. What does it mean? It means that ideally the link should be on the web site's main page. What's more, this page should have a PR rating of at least 4 (PR or Google Page Rank reflects the significance of any particular web page). Five or six such links will do more than hundreds of other ordinary links. How can you get such links? There are also various options. For instance, you can find a resource thematically related to your blog and offer its owners to reciprocate links. Finally, you can buy such links. The higher the web site's PR rating, the more such links will cost you.

Now let's move on to the question of how you can earn money from your own blog. The scheme is quite simple: traffic is converted into money. Your income increases proportionately with the traffic volume. One way to earn from a blog is to place ads, which is done most often through google adwords. Another way is to participate in partnership programs associated with the subject of your blog. So if your blog is devoted to dogs, you should advertise flea control products and other dog-related merchandise. A third way is to sell your own merchandise or services. Of course, you can combine several ways of generating income in a single blog. Last but not least, remember that strength is in numbers, which is why it's a good idea to maintain several resources at the same time.

Making Money With Your Blog

By Bhavna Sharma

I’ve sure you’ve heard before that it’s a possibility to make money with your blog and you may be wondering how this is possible. And were they really meant for making money or just for journaling your personal thoughts? I’m not sure what they were intended for but they are great ways to make money.

I have a personal blog which is just my own private little place to go online and jot down my thoughts, but I also have my business blogs.

Back In The Beginning
Now to be honest with you in the beginning of my blogging experience I really wasn't sure what I should do with my blog. I knew I wanted to make money with it, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what I could do to not only be a value to others so they would come back to my blog, but that I would still enjoy writing it.

So it was really important to me that I find a topic in which I would be excited about, and have enough to offer so that I could blog every week or so. After starting a blog that was meant to just be an add on to my business at MommysPlace.net and struggling with the direction of that blog, I came across one of Alice Seba’s blogs. Which she used to write about her experience through a traffic product.

Every couple of weeks or so she would update her progress through this course. She would tell us all about her successes with this product and how great it was for her business. And it made me think of how I could do something similar.

Product/Service Focused Blog
This is when the light bulb moment went off in my head. This is when I realized what I should have been doing all along. I have been a member of a exclusive coaching program for mothers in business.

Since joining this program my business has seen great success. My income has increased more than five times what it was before I joined and my traffic has increased even more than that.
I enjoy and believe in this coaching program and it happens to have an affiliate program. I often got email from other work at home mothers who wanted to know my thoughts on this program.
Taking a cue from Alice’s blog I decided to start my own such blog. And named it http://mommastermindsjourney.blogspot.com/ - okay, not a catchy title, but I'm no good with picking names

I used this blog for the purpose of documenting my successes with my business. My projects, new content added to my website, keyword phrases I was ranking for…etc. Basically anything that had to do with my business that was directly or indirectly because of my joining Mom Masterminds I jotted down.

Not only was this the best move I could have made for my promoting this affiliate link it also served as a great way to really see for myself the successes my business was achieving and also to keep me on track.

This is one way you could make money with a blog. There are other ways you could make money with a blog if you don’t want to devote a blog to one service or product you’re promoting.
Side Kick Blog

For instance, my blog at http://www.mommyworkingvirtually.com/ is a side kick to MommysPlace.net and my forums. This is a blog in which I update my members on additions to the website, newsletter and forums. Updating any important telecommuting or business news and can promote my adsense and any other affiliate programs.

So this blog serves more than one purpose. My main goal with this blog is to get traffic to certain sections of my website. I have a large website and it’s not always easy for people to find my information. So this is a great way for me to keep certain new pages or sections of my website in the public eye and get traffic to those pages. It also serves as a way to make money with adsense and affiliate programs. And lastly it gives exposure to my forum and my newsletter.

There can be many ways and many topics in which you can make money and gain exposure to other businesses you may have or can help in creating you as an expert in a certain field.
Just take the time to really think about what you could be writing about and then how you can make money with that as well. You can take a look at others blogs to get an idea and see what other people are looking for.

Making Money With Your Blog - Resources:
Blogs to Riches- is an eBook that details ways you can make your blog profitable. And the really cool thing with this is if you list the publisher’s link on your blog for 45 days he will give you this eBook for free! If you don't want to wait that long you can also purchase it for a low price. Read more about Blogs to Riches - http://www.blogstoriches.com/

Increasing Adsense - is an eBook about how to increase your adsense revenue. This eBook isn't specifically geared towards blogs, but the information you will learn you can use with your blogs. (As well as websites and forums...anywhere you have adsense.) http://www.adsense-secrets.com/
* Don't know what adsense is? Go to www.google.com/adsense to learn more.

Ready To Blog?
Are you ready to take the leap into a blog? If so, it’s really very easy to set up a blog. The one resource I have used for all my blogs has been blogger.com. This is free, easy, and fun. There are many templates to chose from and you can customize yours if you would like.

I have used the general template for my mom masterminds blog and I have customized my http://www.mommysworkingvirtually.com/ blog with different colors and fonts then what it came with. I also have that hosted on my own domain, but you certainly don’t have to do that.

Submit Your Blog
After you create your blog you will want to submit it to blog directories to help get your blog out in front of the public. Some of the directories you can try are:

Feeds
Next, you need to add feeds to your blog. What is a feed? Good question. I don’t know the exact way to describe a feed nor do I have a lot of valuable information on this subject.

This is still very new to me, but I can tell you briefly what a feed does. You add a little graphic to your blog. It can be for someone's yahoo page, msn page and other ways.

When they click on that they can add your blog to their personal yahoo page. Then every time you add a new post they are alerted on their yahoo page that you have posted AND it even shows the topic of the post and how long ago it was posted.

This is one of the best resources I’ve found in keeping people coming back to your blog. They can subscribe to it so easily and they will be automatically updated whenever you have posted. It’s pretty easy to add an RSS feed to your blog. The resource I personally use is at http://www.feedburner.com/

Watch Out Blogging World - Here I Come!
Now, see how simple this really can be? You can make money with a blog, gain exposure for another business or websites, can create yourself as an expert on a certain topic, can create a blog for free, get it listed for free and start an RSS feed for free! Now get out there and start blogging.