Make Money Blogging

Can you really make money blogging?

Blogging was once thought of as being just a passing fad but I can tell you it is here to stay! Blogging started out just being an online journal but today blogging software has progressed to the point that you can now use it for just about anything - to create a website or use it as a content management system.

My blogging software of choice is Wordpress. The latest releases make it so easy that anyone can now set up their own self hosted blog and start blogging with just a few clicks to install and set up. I have written down my Wordpress tips for setting up Wordpress and making it work to get results.

To be successful blogging you need to know how to optimize the blog to get traffic but first you need to figure out your site concept (what you are going to blog about) and how you are going to make money. (You can just blog for fun and forget these two steps but why put all of the time and energy into it if you don't want to make money?) Choosing a site concept takes doing a lot of keyword research to see what people are looking for. The main idea of blogging or doing anything online is to give people what they are looking for! The internet runs on keywords so researching and developing a set of keywords that you are going to create your site around will be the foundation for your blog.

Once you get your site concept you can choose your domain name and use some of the words that you found with your keyword research in the domain. This makes the whole process work faster than trying to find some cute name and make it work. (Don't do what I did with this site in other words!)

After you get your domain name and blog all set up start a regular regimen of blogging everyday at least for the first 6-8 months or longer if you can. It takes that much to build a regular following and get enough content for the search engines and readers.

There are many ways to make money blogging - using Google Adsense or one of the many pay per click programs, promoting affiliate products and getting advertisers are the three main ways. I have not found Adsense to be very effective for blogs because of the design of the system. The best place to put ads is in the center top area of the post before the content of the post. The way blogs are set up there is usually too much other stuff in the sidebars that people want to click on. I have found that creating a full website using Site Build it! is a much more effective way of using Adsense.

Promoting affiliate products is another way to go. Affiliate programs are programs that pay you a part of the fee for the product to promote it.

Getting traffic to your blog is done by creating content and letting the search engines know about your blog and getting other sites/blogs to link to you. There are many ways to do that and it should be done gradually over time.

Just about anyone can now make money blogging.