Make Money From Your Blog
First of all, I’m going to assume that your reason for reading this article is for tips on how to make money from your blog. I’m not saying you should or will, but that the following is a great start / way to turn your blog into something that will one day bring in some income. If you think turning your blog into a site that will produce an income is bad then my solution for you….don’t! If you however are serious about making money online and want to turn your blog from a hobby into a little side business or more, then do it.
Before I really get started however I must confess that most people will not make any money from their blog.
Big statement, I know. But its better to be honest and open with you.
So why do people fail? Well, often its simply because their content isn’t worth reading! There is no way that a site with poorly designed content will make money long term. Then following content other reasons also flow, and are inter-related, such as poor traffic numbers, poorly designed pages that don’t allow for ads to be display properly, not appearing in search engine results and people simply often give up too soon. Just because you registered a domain name and posted some articles on it doesn’t mean that you will start making money straight away. I worked on Make Money Online Guaranteed for over 12 months before I saw any return on my effort. The trick is to keep at it. If you really want it to succeed then you will need to put in some hard work.
Everyone thinks that the internet will make them rich. There are many people of course that have been able to capitalize on what the net offers however without really putting in some hard work, none of them were given their results on a silver platter.
So lets get started.
When I first started Make Money Online Guaranteed I decided that I would make this site monetized. What do I mean by this? Well I decided I was going to display ads from the start. I’m up-front and honest about how I make money from my site. I could have built my readership up and added paid ads later on but I didn’t want to cause any problems there as some readers don’t like seeing ads. The fact is, if I wanted the site to continue I needed to display ads otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to fund it long-term development.
Is it possible to make a healthy income online?
It certainly is possible to make a decent income. this could be 4 or 5 figures annually for someone who is working full time from home. It would be less if your working part-time or probably take much longer to achieve the higher level of income. Often people will start out part time on their blog and when they see the potential for income and the dollars starting to roll in they make the switch over to full time to build their blog / website up even more.
Can most people achieve making money from their blog?
Well, as discussed up above, most people will not be able to make money from their blog. If you are serious about doing it the right way, building your site up then your more than likely to fail, but so many people can’t. Maybe its a question of how much time you going to invest, what your background is with regards to business and your area of expertise as well as really….if your a smart person. If your smart then you won’t make the big bad mistakes that 99% of everyone else trying to make money online from their blog makes.
This is relevant to other areas of life though as well. Think about business. The smart people usually succeed. Now that may be harsh and fill my inbox with complaints but its not hard to see the truth. Think about another industry…such as music. How many people can pick up a guitar, learn some chords and sing some songs and think they want to make truckloads of money from their band. But in reality they are just the same as every other college band. The ones that succeed either had a lucky break, or were different to the rest. Maybe not smarter in the sense of the word most people think of, such as brain smarts, but certainly more savvy. Perhaps they got their demo in front of the right people and used tools such as YouTube or Myspace to boost their exposure to the world.
Do I need to be a computer nerd?
Certainly not! But if you have some web savvy ways of thinking then you will certainly have a strong advantage over most of your competitors. I for instance completed a computer science degree so that gave me some exposure to web techniques, programming languages etc. But for most people it might be a case of learning the skills you need to be successful with your blog….Otherwise you will need to invest some money to pay a programmer to get it setup for you.
These are some of the areas that you should have an understanding in so that you can really boost your potential for a decent income from your blog:
* Wordpress (or other software that will allow you to create your blog)
* HTML/CSS
* How to deal with blog comments (and also spam)
* RSS/syndication
* Blog feeds
* linking to other blogs and receiving link backs to yours
* search engines
* search engine optimization (or SEO)
* page ranking
* social networking / bookmarking (ie: facebook, myspace)
* advertising options such as Google Adsense
* How to monitor your traffic on your site and intrepret the results
* email (this one is really a given)
While there are many more that could be covered such as using podcasts, videocasts, webforms, subscription email programs if just looking at the above list seems alien to you, then perhaps making money online isn’t what your cut out to do. And that is fine, because it is much better to realise that now then later on after you have invested money or time into getting something started that simply won’t work out.
Its also about balancing the various aspects of monetizing your blog so that you provide attention to each area and not overload your concern to one area. An example of this would be advertising and placing too many ads on all of your pages. This would have a negative impact on generating income from your site as your visitors would simply move onto the next website where they are not bombarded with ads. At the same time, if you can’t read your traffic stats then you might not realise that your visitors are quickly leaving your site for instance.
Are you an Entrepreneur?
These type of people are the ones who really will succeed with making money from their blog as they are able to think outside the square and adapt quickly to change and opportunity. If you aren’t savvy with thinking of new ways to beat your competition, develop your product or way of marketing then you will get left behind. There are always new ways to make money from business opportunities and such, so keep an eye out for them.
If you don’t know what opportunities there are to be had with the latest technologies, blogging techniques or ways to make money from the internet then stay up to date by reading various sites on the topic to get a full and up to date understanding. This is an area that is constantly changing. People’s wants change quickly, Google changes al l the time, so one day you might be on page 1 and the next page 5. If you aren’t working on your site from a holistic point of view then it will be difficult to survive the test of time and change.
The beauty is also in learning new ways of doing things to improve your site, maybe help your readers come back more often, techniques to provide more value to your readers as well as increasing your profits. Stay on top of whats new and you will do well.
Finally for now…
Produce an income strategy. Define what you want to achieve so you have something to measure against. How else will you know if your actually succeeding and hitting the goals you want for your site and ultimately making money to support yourself.
More to come, stay tuned.
Making Money Online: What’s the fuss all about?
With more and more people having access to the internet these days, the whole economy is changing as far as the way people are interacting with each other, both on a social and personal level and also a commercial and business level. The opportunities to reach a mass audience have grown beyond the local newspaper or phone book to potentially people right around the globe in hundreds of countries.
With the rise of the internet and the marketing and business opportunities available, more and more people are realising their dream of making money online. How are they doing this? Well people who have previously had some desire to create wealth in a passive way or an active way are using the tools available to sell their product or service in ways never before possible.
The main tool that is available of course is Google. This search engine is the core behind many people’s success. with such a stronghold and significant brand across the globe, whenever we want to find something we want, we log onto Google and search for it. And if you don’t rank in Google, then you don’t get your business. Simple as that. The trick is, its not as easy as it sounds.
More and more people today are hearing about success stories of people who have made it big on the internet. This might be from the local neighborhood mum who was working from home part time while looking after the kids. Perhaps she started a recipe blog for her favourite recipes, and within a few months noticed her traffic was spiking with regular readers and commentors and next thing you know it, she is selling a book or teaching classes. This is still happening all the time. People are making it big by just doing what they love and are great at.
What are you really good at? If you were to start a site online to make money from it, what would you rank as your best credientials or skill set or knowledge base. Some people have made money online by simply providing free information to people. If its an area that a lot of people are interested in then its relatively straight forward to build a following and usually people put some advertising on their site to support the cost of running it. With enough people viewing ones site, it is possible to make a small income from running Google Adsense or some of the other advertising options, such as selling ads to local businesses.
Generally you need at least 100,000 visitors per month if you want to make money from Google Adsense, and this might take one, two or even more years to get to this point. The only real way you build this type of following is to simply provide valuable content. Its amazing how things can take off once people see that you are providing real value and information that is useful to them.
Remember also that if you want to make your hobby into a part time income and make money from it, then you will need to do something different to everyone else on the internet. While this is hard work, it is worth it in the long term if you stick with it. You might work on your site for a couple of years before it makes you any money but once your generating traffic it will be much easier to increase the level of readers and also you have the option to provide other services, such as recommendations of products or charge more for your advertising.
But, back on track to the title of this post, what is all the fuss about making money online. Well lets put it simply. While it can take some really hard work, lots of patience and a bit of creative energy to get something started, once you are making money online it can keep going for as long as you manage it or want to. For example, this site, when I first started it, it took at least 6 months before I made any money from Google Adsense, but each month the number of visitors increases and so therefore does the income. This is only ever continuing to increase as I add more content, more value and build relationships with my readers. Some of my oldest posts that have been up for over 12 months are the ones that generate me the most hits from Google, so its amazing how something that I produced so long ago, is now starting to provide income. Thats why its important not to give up. Continue creating content. When you produce something that is worth reading and post it onto the internet, it might not be found for several months or even years. But eventually someone will discover it, and assuming it is worth reading, will pass it onto someone else who may benefit and before you know it your little site will be making you money online.
Make Money Online from Blogging
Blogging is one of the best ways to make money online today. A blogging website is simply one that allows you, the author to share your opinion on any topic you want, and allow your readers to comment on it if you so wish. Take my site, www.make-money-online-guaranteed.com. This is a blog. This is also a blog that makes money online!
There are different types of blogs. There are those that are purely aimed at social writing. These ones can be great, however they tend not to make as much money as the blogs that are more focused on search engine rankings, and where you are selling a product. If you seriously want to make money online, and not just a small amount, then you need to write your blog so that it has useful content on it, but more importantly that it directs the reader to buy a product. A lot of people believe that you will only make money if you have a loyal subscriber list. While this certainly is great, and you need to provide valuable content, the truth is that selling products is where the real and big money is at. Unless of course your driving hundreds of thousands of people to your site each month can you make a large amount of money from advertising, but in this case I would advice to sell your or affiliate products even more, as you have such a large audience to offer your product to. You then get the best of both worlds. Selling your product and also offering Google adsense ads to give you a secondary income stream!
Its important not to write your blog as a long sales letter. No one wants to read that. Offer content that is useful and valuable. If people actually like your writings, then they will be more likely to look into the products that your recommending as well. I only ever as a matter of principal recommend products that I have tried and tested. You should do the same thing. Reputation is big on the internet. If your offering a bad product, then word will spread around sooner than you can open another bottle of chi3!
The final step of course is to make sure you have a great ranking with the search engines. This takes time to build up, but the more content that is relevant to your site, the more back links you have and the length of time your site has been up will all contribute to your sites popularity in the search engines. Get all of these right and it really is possible to make money online!
How to make money online from blogging (Part 1)
Before we begin, it is probably a good idea to cover briefly the concept of blogging and blogs. For some of you, this will be obvious and well known, but there are still many people that are unclear exactly what a blog is. And while it could be possible to easily fill hundreds of pages in a book on the topic of making money from blogging, I will try to offer you a more concise background here in this article.
A blog could be described as a certain type of website. This type of website comes down to the functionality. It is essentially a site that allows a user or users to add short to long posts, on any topic, in various forms such as text, images and video and allows for readers to comment on the post.
Blogs can be used by anyone from the local college student, keeping an online diary of his fitness program, to a finance company that allows for their top executives to write formal articles about market conditions, investment opportunities or how they went at golf on the weekend.
Traditionally these days, when people think of blogs, they think of a way to make money online. This is because there are many bloggers out there now that are writing regularly about a topic they are both an expert in and enjoy, and in return for high volumes of traffic and visitors enjoy revenue from such avenues as Google who pay them to display ads on their website.
The other good thing about blogs is that they don’t always need to be viewed as a website. Many people these days subscribe to blogs and read them on their personal mobile devices, or in an email platform, where everytime the author posts a new article, an email is delivered to the reader. They can either decide to read the article, or they delete it.
There are of course many blogs that don’t make any money at all, and nor are they set up to make money. This is where it helps if you can define your purpose and goals for a blog before you start it. We will go into detail more on this later. For now, the important thing is that you understand that a blog is a website that allows you to interact with your audience in several ways, regularly or infrequent and is usually easy to maintain, such that you don’t need prior technical knowledge to manage. When you want to add a new post this is straight forward and software installed on your hosting server takes care of all of the background processes. Some websites such as blogger.com don’t even require you to pay for hosting so it is an area that has exploded to cater for everyone’s needs.
So the question, of How to make money online from blogging is a very broad question. Before you can even begin to look at money you need to decide what you will write about. Your content is key here. If you have poor content that no one will read, then chances are very slim you will ever make a cent from blogging. The only way you can make money online is to have traffic coming to your blog, to your website. So lets look at content to begin.
“Content is King” is true when it comes to blogging. You need to look at content as your ‘product’. If you have a great product then people will want to use it. They will even pay money for it, if its something that they want and can’t find else where. Without content it is impossible to make money online from blogs.
The important thing to remember when deciding what you will write about, where you will focus your energy, is trying to decide what will be popular from a traffic and search engine point of view. What do people want? Do you want to please the masses with very generic articles, or do you want to write for a specific group of people who only them will ever see your articles, but when they do you will offer tremendous value. I can tell you now that if you decide to write on teenage boys and knitting, then chances are your audience may be too small to generate much traffic and ultimately, much income. So you need to keep a balance. Try to write about something your passionate about and know a lot about, but also something that will appeal to a good size group of people.
So once you have decided on your topic for content, you need to set up a blog. I won’t go into this here, but basically you can get a free blog from blogger.com or wordpress.org. Wordpress is a very common platform and is very easy to use. If your serious about your decision to make money online long term, then you may be better off getting a hosting account and registering your own domain name. This way that you can build your traffic, links and readership to a site that is going to be around, instead of setting everything up on a free account, then having to transfer it across to your own domain. If you don’t have a budget for it, then go with the free options to start, as this at least will allow you to test the waters and see if you both enjoy writing and what the interest for your subject is like.
In the first few months of your blog being up and running, it is critical that you post some very valuable content. Get it up there, information that is going to be useful to people. You need to establish yourself as an expert on your topic and start to get subscribers to your blog. Ask them if they like it and what they want to see more of. If you keep them happy then they will continue to visit your site on a regular basis.
Once you start to see a large amount of people visiting your site, it can be time to turn it towards making money. The easiest and most common way of turning your blog towards online income is to use Google Adsense. Its free to sign up and implements well with most blog platforms. Bear in mind though, unless your getting at least 10,000 people a month visiting your site, you may be disapointed with the return from your advertising commissions. If your site is generating over 50,000 hits a month then your well on track to make a significant amount of money online.
So in summary for this part of the post, ONE way to make money online from blogging is to display ads on your blog. The way you get people to your blog to see the ads is to produce excellent content. If you have the content then the people will come. Just remember though, it won’t happy immediately. Most of the top blogs that earn money online from advertising, etc didn’t pop up there overnight. They might have been slogging away for 2 or more years. The thing is, those that have stuck at it, continued to develop and build their readership are now sitting back and enjoying large pay checks each month from the big companies like Google.
