Start a Blog and Make Money From It :

Starting a blog is one of the most accessible ways to make money online. If you are starting your first blog, you are being confronted with many choices about how to set up your blog, including selecting your blogging platform. A blogging platform is the software that will help you turn your writing into a website that can be easily navigated and accessed by visitors from around the world.

There are two basic platforms to choose from when it comes to successful blogging: WordPress and Blogger. Both of these options have advantages and disadvantages. Before you make your decision, you should read through the pros and cons of each and think about which will be best for your needs.

Blogger has several advantages. It’s very easy for new bloggers to use.

Setting up a blog with Blogger is as simple as following a few prompts.

There is nothing to install. Some of the other advantages include:

Price: Blogger is totally free to use. You don’t have to purchase a

domain name as the system will give you an address based on the

name of your blog.

Ease of use: Posting to your blog is easy. You can also change the look

of your blog very easily. This is all done through Blogger’s dashboard. If

you have more than one blog with Blogger, you can access all of the

blogs from the same dashboard.

However, Blogger does have some major disadvantages when it comes to creating money making blogs.

Lack of flexibility: Compared to other options out there, the design and function of a Blogger blog is very limited. You can download and install custom themes for the blog, but most look very similar. This means your blog won’t stand out as well in your niche.

Domain name: You will get a free domain name with your Blogger

Ownership: You will never truly own your Blogger blog because the files

and content are hosted on Blogger’s server.

WordPress is the other popular platform for blogging. There is a free option that functions similarly to Blogger. However, there is also a free option that allows you to have your own website name. You install WordPress on you website hosting and hook it up to a domain name that you own. If you don’t know how to do this, your hosting company should be able to walk you through the process.

Other advantages include:

Customization: WordPress themes are diverse and plentiful. Some themes will even make your blog look like an online newspaper.

Features: WordPress users have created tons of “plugins” that will increase the functionality of your blog and help you make the most out of your site.

However, WordPress is not without its problems. It is not as user friendly as Blogger, which can make it intimidating for newbies. You will also have to spend money to get your domain name and your website hosting.

Despite these disadvantages, most professional bloggers go with the WordPress option because they maintain ownership of their blogs and

can customize them to their heart’s content, but ultimately the choice is

up to you and what will fit your needs the best.

brainstorming and generating good topic ideas to write about on your new blog.

Starting a blog is fairly easy, but keeping a blog interesting and fresh is

a whole other matter. While many marketers have no trouble beginning

a niche blog, the sheer number of abandoned blogs around the ‘net

speaks to the fact that many marketers don’t know what to do to keep a

blog going. According to blogging experts, the key to keeping a blog

going is to post frequently. This means that you’re going to need a ever

present stream of content coming into your blog.

You may be intimidated by the thought of having to come up with lots of

topic ideas. Brainstorming great topic ideas for your blog posts are

easy if you use the following ideas.

– News in your niche.

Your blog should be timely and there’s no better way to attract attention

on your blog than to tap into some ongoing news. No matter what your

niche is you can find news stories and breaking information that will

help fuel timely blog posts. Sign up for Google Alerts (it’s free) and set

up alerts on important words in your niche. This way you’ll be able to

see the news in your niche and blog about current topics.

– Comments section.

The comments section in your blog can be a great source of writing

inspiration. Let’s say you have a post on your marketing blog about

keyword research. Within the comments section, a few people start

asking about how to use keywords in articles for article marketing.

Voila! You have your next blog post. Look through your comments

section to identify topics that you can write about or questions you can

answer in the form of a blog post.

– Resource lists.

Are there some websites or other resources that your niche needs to

know about? Write a few resource list posts. Resource lists posts are

very easy to write and they provide maximum value to your readers

because they can get the information that they need easily. When you

can’t think of anything else to write about you can pull together a helpful

list for your readers.

– Other blogs in your niche.

Keep your finger on the pulse of your niche. Watch other blogs in your

niche and see what they are writing about. You can take a different

angle on the same topic, or cover an area of the topic that the original

author missed. If you disagree with the author, feel free to go ahead

and express your opinion on your blog. Other bloggers can be a great

source of information so be sure to get involved in the community.

– Quick tips.

Start collecting a list of quick tips you’d like to share with your niche.

These can be inspired by your personal experience with the niche, from

other blog posts you’ve read or from other products in your niche. When

you find yourself stuck for blog post ideas, you can write a quick tips

post.

These tips just scratch the surface of where you can find topic ideas for

your blog posts. Start keeping a notepad file with blog post ideas and

you’ll never be at a loss for material.

Different “Kinds” of blog posts that you can use on your blog.

Blog posts come in many different forms and lengths. If you want to

keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Creating

different types of blog posts will keep your audience interested. It will

also keep you from being bored with your blog.

Whether you are blogging to make money directly from the blog or

blogging to drive traffic to an affiliate program, you should know about

these five kinds of blog posts.

1. Review blog posts.

Review blog posts can help you monetize your blog. When you review a

product and include an affiliate link, you’ll make a commission off of

each sale generated with your affiliate link. Review blog posts should

go over some of the major plusses and minuses of the product. Even if

you loved the product; you should keep your review balanced by

mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your audience

will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your

recommendation.

2. Quick tips.

Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They

are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of

information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really

warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be

focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a

Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.

3. Lists.

Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see

that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make

lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey

information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers

who like to skim over information. You can create resource lists that will

help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create

lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Ways to

Drive Traffic to Your Sales Letter.” The possibilities are endless.

4. Interviews.

Although these require a bit of preparation, they can be very valuable to

your blog. You can interview someone in your niche and share the

results of the interview with your blog readers. This will not only help

provide valuable content for your blog, but you can also get more traffic

to your blog. Likely, the person who you are interviewing will publicize

the event on their blog and around the ‘net which will bring more traffic

back to you.

5. How to posts.

Like quick tips, how to posts help you provide valuable information to

your readers. However, unlike quick tips, these posts go into detail on a

certain topic. Somehow to posts are even separated out into two or

three part courses. For ideas on what to create how to posts about,

look at the most frequently asked questions in your niche and develop

posts around those topics.

Get traffic to your blog.

The simple truth is that a blog without readers is pretty much useless. If

you’ve been blogging for a while and have only been getting a trickle of

viewers to your posts, you need to put a traffic building plan into action.

Building traffic is just as an important skill to bloggers as writing quality

posts is. Most bloggers are terrific at creating content but don’t know a

thing about building traffic. Here is a quick guide to the five most

popular (and most effective) traffic building techniques.

– Get social!

Social networking and blogging go hand in hand. Your blog posts can

be distributed across social networking channels in many different

ways. Sign up for Twitter and tweet about your posts as soon as they

are added to you blog. Update your Facebook status with a link to you

new blog posts. Submit your stories to Digg – What the Internet is talking about right now, the front page of the internet and

StumbleUpon moved to Mix!. Remember that in order for social networking to be

effective, you need to participate with other people on your list. If you

visit their links and respond to their updates, they’ll be likely to do the

same for you.

– Get noticed!

Find blogs in your niche and start following their posts. Make sure to

add insightful and interesting comments on their posts. Not only will the

blog owner take notice and visit your blog, other commenters will visit

your blog to get more of your great insight into the topic. Don’t spread

yourself too thin with blog commenting, but make it a point to comment

on a few related blogs each week.

– Get good use out of your RSS feed!

RSS feeds are a way to syndicate your blog’s content so that it is sent

to many different people in their own blog readers or on their own sites.

Most blogging systems have RSS feeds automatically included but you

can add a lot more functionality to your feed by using a free service like

Google FeedBurner. With FeedBurner you can add things like sharing the

feed via e-mail to your feed so it will pull in new readers and encourage

previous visitors to come back to the blog again.

– Get articles in directories!

You may think that by being a blogger you can ignore article marketing.

However, you can get a lot of traffic to your blog by tweaking some of

your popular blog posts and adding them to article directories. You can

post your popular posts as articles with a link back to your blog in many

different article directories. Not only will you get a valuable backlink but

your article may also be used by ezine owners which will bring you

more traffic.

– Get backlinking!

Speaking of backlinks, you should work to build backlinks to your blog

through several different means. By creating backlinks to your blog,

you’ll improve your blog’s ranking in search engine results. You can get

lots of traffic from search engines if you are within the first group of

search results for your keywords.

These simple ways of building traffic can be used over and over again

to help build traffic to your blog and increase your readership.

I want to share five easy ways that you can make money from your blog.

Your blog has the potential to be a money-making magnet, if you know

the right steps to take. Blogs once started as a sort of online diary.

They’ve been totally transformed to fit a whole range of needs, from a

place to house an online newspaper to a simple way to start an Internet

stream of income. The following five methods will help you make money

from your blog, no matter what niche you are in and how you are using

your blog.

1. Affiliate marketing.

This is one of the easiest ways to make money from your blog, and the

simplest to start. You begin by selecting an affiliate program from one

of the popular affiliate networks. You can either post a review on your

blog about the product (complete with your affiliate link) or post ads

along the side of your posts (also with your affiliate link). Affiliate

marketing is simple to implement because you don’t have to worry

about writing a product.

2. Selling your own product.

If you feel there is a need to be met in your niche and want to create

your own product, you can add it to your blog for another stream of

income. Advertising your own product on your blog is a smart idea.

Your readers have already built a level of trust with you so they’ll be

likely to be interested in your product. You can link to your product’s

sales page directly from your posts and display graphic ads in the

sidebars of your blog.

3. Contextual advertising.

Contextual advertising, like the type offered at Text Links, will help you

make money from your blog without much intervention on your part.

When you sign up with Text Links or a similar service, your blog posts

will automatically have certain words hyperlinked. These links go to

advertiser’s websites. You get paid when someone clicks on a link.

Unlike with affiliate programs, you don’t get a commission on the sale

but you do get paid whether or not your visitor buys from the

advertiser’s site.

4. Other types of advertising.

Google Adsense and other pay per click advertising programs will give

you code to add to your website. These programs will display ads in the

sidebars of your website. Anytime a visitor clicks on one of these links,

you will get paid anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars depending

on your niche. These ads don’t appear within the body of your post, but

they are based on the content of your posts so they will be attractive to

your audience.

5. Get paid for reviews.

Once you have some traffic coming to your blog, you can be paid to

post reviews. There are many different networks that link advertisers

with bloggers. You simply find an advertiser through one of these

networks and promise to post a review on your blog about the product

or service. You’ll be paid a flat rate for your review. Be sure the product

or service is relevant to your niche for best results with this monetization

model.

As you can see, you have a lot of different options when it comes to

making money with your blog. Try one or all of these to see what works

best for your niche.

I wish you the best of luck with your blog.