Making Money With A Blog

How Do You Make (More) Money With Blogging?

Everyone and their neighbor seems to have a blog now. For the last several years the growth of personal and business blogs have been on the rise and they will only continue to be everywhere on the web. With the popularity of WordPress, Joomla and other content management systems (CMS) and blogging software the trend will only continue and furthermore blogs will become more sophisticated in their appearance and function as time goes on.

The question for many new and even experienced bloggers is “How do I make money with my blog”? Monetizing blogs seems to be an easy task, but the reality now is that most bloggers do not turn a profit on their time invested in setting up and maintaining their blogs.

Making money with a blog requires several tasks. The first of which is to have a blog. The following steps below outline the basic overview of what it takes to make money blogging.

1. Get a blog
1a. Get your own domain name.
Name.com is the best is the best domain name registrar we’ve used. We don’t make any money referring you to their program. Their control panel and interface is clean and easy to use. We would personally avoid 1+1.com (OneandOne.com) and avoid IPOWER web at all costs. We have personally had horrible (nightmarish) and time wasting experiences using both 1and1.com and IPower.com services. Personally without getting into specific details we think their business practices are overly aggressive and too impersonal for our tastes. Service and simplicity along with ease of use is the name of the game and Name.com fits the bill nicely.

1b. Set up your domain on it’s own hosting service. We have found HostGator.com to be the best. We think HostGator is the easiest to use and inexpensive and stable. In addition, setting up blogs with HostGator is a breeze. WordPress and Joomla can be installed in a snap. This blog is set up on HostGator with WordPress. (We make a small commission referring you to HostGator, however we have been using HostGator for years and are very happy with their web hosting). Go to HostGator now.

1c. Install WordPress or other CMS / blog software (most web hosts now have simple “one click” installation of these in their control panels once you have an account set up with them.

2. Start writing content
2a. Content should be based around a theme although random content is ok. The main point is that “something” is better than “nothing”.
2b. Original content is better than recycled content, but again “something” is better than “nothing”.

3. Customize SEO properties of your blog.
3a. Customize titles and link structure of your blog to reference keywords.
3b. Continue to maintain good SEO.

4. Promote your blog
4a. Submit to search engines.
4b. Link with other blogs.
4c. Social networks.
4d. Etc…

5. Continue to write posts
5a. A post of a day is minimal.
5b. Goal within one year should be at least 300 unique article posts.

Step 5 is where most bloggers quit. Most full time bloggers making a full time income from blogs do not begin to see full time income until about 2 years after writing and posting everyday. After about 500 unique articles is when measurable and significant traffic and income comes in from various sources.

How to monetize your blog

The most popular sources of income for bloggers are:

1. Google Adsense
2. Other PPC ad networks
3. Promoting affiliate programs and offers
4. Promoting other businesses and products such as an MLM business or another main business related to the blog topic. In this case the blog becomes a feeder to the main business instead of a direct source of income.

Discipline and perseverance is the name of the game with blogging. The more you write and post the more traffic you generate and the more you potentially can make.

Don’t make the mistake that most newbie bloggers make and continually micro manage and check stats on your blog. Simply focus on consistently producing and posting decent content and over time (we’re talking 9 to 12 months time) you will see growth in traffic and income.

Think of blogging as planting a tomato plant. At first especially for the first several weeks you will see minimal growth even though your maintain it and give it water everyday, eventually the plant will take root and produce fruit in due time.

A great resource and course with video lessons on properly setting up and marketing a blog from zero is this blogging course from BlogProfit.com. It’s a great course not only for beginners but also for experienced bloggers that will help you increase the financial viability of your blogs.

Have fun blogging!