How to earn Money by Blogging

    Making money online is mostly about customizing a monetizing formula for your blog.  Depending on your skill level, network, and current traffic levels your blog has a variety of options to make money. It is one of the best method on the net to earn a decent income.

Some of the options in this section are better than others and matter of fact all of them can be used no matter what level you are currently at.  Novices can use any beginner level monetization methods and Probloggers have the luck of using everything and anything they see fit.

What Exactly is Blogging?

Many people believe that a blog is just like a personal journal and just like them it permits the author to write about anything under the sun. The defining difference being, blogging has a worldwide audience.

Well, blogging is very simple to do. If you have created journals before, then creating blog posts should just be a walk in the park. However, blogging for the sake of doing it, is totally different from blogging to make a profit.

Blogging is fast becoming one of the most popular ways of setting up a new site that Internet Marketers can use. With its ease of installation on self-hosted sites; its huge range of plug-ins that can help with everything from listing building, to advertising to SEO and a user friendly way of creating pages and posts if you are looking to start a business online then creating your own blog can be the most effective, simple and cost effective ways of getting started.

Benefits of Blogging

So why do people blog? Is it just because they want to share a part of themselves to the online community? Not everyone wants to earn money from blogging. Sometimes their main motivation for doing it is to simply talk about themselves and see how people react.

However, most people blog because they want to make a profit out of it in two ways: directly and indirectly.

An indirect way of earning money is through promotion. Let us say you have a business, and you want to develop your own brand and credibility. You use your blog to establish yourself as an expert in the field, bring your products and services much closer to your targeted audience, and allow them to send direct feedback to you.

You may also use it if you are an affiliate marketer. With affiliate marketing, you simply promote other poeples products on your blog in exchange of commission for every sale that is made when your readers make a purchase.

When we speak of the direct method, it means the blog itself generates income for the blogger. For example, the blogger sells his/her own products or services directly to the avid readers. You should use Adf.ly, Mturk and Freelance for some extra income.

How Do I Build a Blog?

So how do you go about building your first blog? There are numerous answers to this question. It all depends on how much control you want to keep. Many people start out using free services like Blogger.com. While these services are perfectly fine to use, there are some drawbacks that you need to be aware of.

First of all, when you’re using a free service you are limited in the theme and customization options that you can make to the website. When you build your own website or use a self-hosted WordPress blog, you will have more options to customize your site. We’ll talk about that more later.

WordPress is a free blogging platform that many people use. However, they have the same issues if you use the free, WordPress hosted blogs as you would with Blogger or any other company. The great thing about WordPress, though, is that you can purchase your own hosting through companies like HostGator and build your own WordPress blog that you own and maintain. In other words, you don’t have to work under anyone else’s rules like you would with a WordPress or Blogger hosted blog.

If you’re not a technical person, this might seem like it would be a very difficult task to build your own blog. However, it’s actually very simple and can be done with a few clicks of a button. The first thing you want to make sure is that when you purchase your hosting package you make sure that the hosting company has something called Fantastico.

This is a simple software that allows you to click a few buttons and immediately install a WordPress blog on your hosting account. Once you’ve installed WordPress, it’s as simple as choosing one of the free themes that are available right there in your dashboard. The WordPress dashboard system is actually very simple to use. You can start creating posts and pages immediately upon loading it onto your hosting account.

What You will Learn

Everything I discussed with you will learn today hopefully changed your mind-set about blogging. You don’t have to be an ordinary blogger. Most of all, you don’t have to earn pennies when you can earn hundreds to thousands of dollars every month through your blogs.

If you’re not fully motivated by money, then surely you will feel inspired by the hundreds of people who follow you, those who look up to you for comments and suggestions, those who are willing to share their thoughts and put their trust in your credibility and level of expertise.

PPC – Pay Per Click is an advertising program in which ads are placed on your blog and you are paid whenever your visitors click on the ads.  It is the most common method bloggers use to make money online.  It involves almost no effort and is so incredibly easy that many blogs have too much advertising on them.  

Main Sites: Google Adsense Chitika Yahoo! Bidvertiser Adbrite

CPM - Cost Per Thousand is an impression based advertising system.  This means advertisers place ads on your blog and you are paid based on how many times the ad shows up.  This can be profitable for blogs with big traffic, and can start to bring money to even the smallest blogs. 

Main Sites: Value Click Tribal Fusion

Money Widgets -A very simple advertising system is easily integrated into your blog’s sidebar with widget advertising.  Just embed the widget into your sidebar and watch the ads begin.

Main Sites: The Newsroom WidgetBucks ScratchBack SmartLinks

In-Text Ads – You know what these ads are.  You have probably seen them all over small blogs and websites on the internet.  They are links with double-lines below them.  While sometimes useful for blog owners pockets, they eventually irritate and annoy most readers into leaving the blog and not returning/subscribing. 

Main Sites: Kontera Vibrant Media

Parked Domains – Have a few domains you are planning on using soon but are not ready to start?  Parked domains serve the purpose as advertisement and traffic redirection.  This is perhaps the easiest way to make money, although in small doses, online.  Just get a domain name and use the very easy parked domain programs.

Main Sites: Parked Google Parked

Affiliate Marketing – Perhaps the most lucrative process for earning money online is by using your blog to recommend useful and relevant products to your readers.  The best examples are seen by the many bloggers linking to different themes, ebooks and other products.  The best thing about affiliate marketing is that you are only marketing the product and not selling it.  Just make sure the product is relevant and not over-used. 

Main Sites: ClickBank Commission Junction Azoogle Ads Link Share

Text Link Ads – As your blog builds reputation and traffic your posts/pages become great places for links.  Many people will even pay you to put their link on your website or page.  While it has earning potential, be leery of this form of revenue as it may be detrimental to your blog in Google’s algorithm.  So study it out before you make your decision.

Main Sites: Text-Link-Ads Text-Link-Brokers

Feed Ads – An easy way to increase the advertisement on your blog is by adding them to your rss feeds.  The simplest way is to get Feedburner and set it up for your blog.  Once you have done that then click on the monetize tab and Google Adsense will be added to your feeds in almost one-click!

Main Sites: Feedburner BidVertiser Pheedo

Paid Surveys and Polls – It is just what it says it is.  You fill out surveys and polls or place them on your blog for others to fill out and earn money.  In doing this option be careful to find survey or poll companies that have credible backgrounds as this is a source for scammers.

Main Sites: VizuAnswers

Pop-up Ads – These pesky and annoying advertisements may be great for some of your niche blogs or sub-domains.  Not worth putting on blogs you actually want to build a community on, pop-up ads offer decent revenue to blogs looking to exist but not grow significantly.  But be aware that it is annoying to the reader.

MainSites: Adbrite TribalFusion PayPopup PopupAd Adversal

Article Marketing – A two-edged sword.  You get both quality backlinks to your blog and its posts while also creating earning potential.   It’s also very easy through the simple Main Sites available to you.  Using this blogging income source is both potentially lucrative and excellent marketing.

Main Sites: Squidoo Hubpages Associate Content

Direct Banner – With ppc and cpm advertising there is potential to make money, but direct banner ads bring advertising on your blog to a new level.  It takes a little more work but you can find yourself making much more money and doing it pretty quickly.  It even offers affiliate incomes to others who will try to get advertisers for your blog.

Main Sites:   OIOPublisher , Ad Rotator Plug-in

Sponsored Post -  Like a sponsored review these are posts paid for by others.  What this usually looks like is a post created about a specific website or allowing the post to link to another blog with very specific and targeted keyword links.

Main Sites: PayPerPost

Site Flipping -  The process of site flipping usually involves the creation of design, content, and some traffic to then go and sell the blog.  The easiest way to do this is by forming a partnership and getting someone to design the blog while the other writes content and markets it.

Main Sites: Digital Point Sitepoint

Ebook Sales – Writing an ebook is a great way to establish credibility and expertise in your niche while also providing a handsome income.  The way it works is that you provide a very useful resource – like an electronic book and then others buy it.

Main Sites: E-Junkie WP E-Commerce

Freelance Work – Once you have established yourself you can start consulting, writing, designing, and offering other services through your blog.  I have had a lot of experience with consulting and it is a great income and a lot of fun. So use your blog to showcase your skills.  Blogs are the ultimate portfolio.

Main Sites: Paypal WP E-Commerce