I’ve had this come up as a question, and it follows onto the SEO article for newbies that I posted recently. Can I make money blogging? And how can I make money blogging?

The first thing you need is a niche. This I have spoken about in my Adsense article. You need to have content that will appeal to a wide audience. It needs to be well written, interesting and informative, and could either cover a wide range of topics or more narrowly just one topic. For example, Mr Uber-techie has a blog on our itpimp.network site collection (MMO COZA is a subsidiary of www.itpimp.net) where he rants or discusses things mostly technical. My all time favourite blog is Filth Wizadry where I learn all sorts of fabulous things to do with my kids. These are blogs focussed on a main topic. These generally are easier to earn money from, as Adsense and other money makers can target your site better with adverts.

Once you have the content, start looking at how to get traffic to your site.

WikiHow points out that the best way to increase traffic to your site is to offer free, quality content that can’t be found anywhere else. At least that they can’t find it in the quality you write it!

Their article warns that you cannot SPAM others, nor should you try any “black hat” tricks like website generators and other tricks because while these will work in the short term, you will find your site being blocked as a spam site.

All my SEO ideas and tips are valid for increasing traffic. Because as I said, the more visible you are, the more traffic you will attract!

Keywords are a great way to get traffic to your site. Most blogging sites have an area to write in the keywords for your blog post. Pull out your main keywords, use Google’s free keyword tool to see how popular the keywords / phrases are, and other ones you can use.

Just don’t use only keywords in your content! You will look like a spam site, and search engines don’t like them things! They place them at the end of the line instead of up top!! And we don’t want that! Rather look at incorporating keywords that are relevant to your niche, and write them in the keywords list section of the blog. Another word of caution: in this list, box thing, only put keywords that are actually in your content. See the top of the paragraph as to why!

A great idea that I got from Terry Detty of www.webreference.com is to visit other blogs that are relevant to your articles, and leave a suitable comment, signed by yourself, and with a link to your site. This way the readers of other blogs will know who you are, and that you know your subject. Just don’t make a blatant punt for your site. Mostly this will just be looked over, and could even be removed from the comments section. I know I would! Leave a legitimate comment, and all will be fine.

Once you have your blog, and you are adding fresh content regularly and have started to climb the Alexa ranks... it is time to start signing yourself up to money makers!

The easiest, and best way to start is with Adsense. Create yourself an account, both with PayPal (so that you can get your moola) and with Google Adsense. Some blog accounts have a link in their account settings to get you to Adsense.

Affiliate marketing is the next thing to work on. Companies such as Amazon have an affiliate programme, where you earn commission on books that are advertised and bought from your site. Quite a nifty thing especially if there are many books that relate to your content, and that your readers will get some value from. All you need to do is create an account with Amazon, and viola! The rest is done from their side. You can also make friends with other people, and sell their products for commission.

If you provide services of any kind, a blog can also serve as a platform for you to advertise your services. Your readers read about how well you know your subject matter, get tips, info and knowledge, and you are able to provide an additional service to them too. Great way to make money for yourself through an online medium!

Charity orientated sites can ask for contributions. You would have to responsibly use part of the money to benefit your charity, and the way the money has been used can create further blog posts. Normal bloggers can ask for a contribution too... but readers are more likely to give money for a good cause, rather than just to keep a blogger online full time.

Your advertising space can also be sold. Richard will be writing about that soon, so keep popping in to this site to find out more on that topic!

All in all the most important part to making money from blogging, is to persevere, have patience and keep blogging! Write content for your site at least once a week, if not more, and slowly but surely more and more readers will click, advertisers will pay more to be there, and your bank balance will stop feeling the strain of month to month bills.

Shares: