Make money from blogging – turn passion into profit!
Do you have a hobby or interest that you would like to tell the world about? Perhaps you have an interesting career that you could journalise? Or maybe you just enjoy writing and would like to update the web with your daily thoughts. Whatever your motivation, thousands of people everyday are writing and making a living from blogs online. So how do you turn your passion into profit?
Pick a subject that excites you – Content is king
Generally, it makes sense when starting out to pick a subject that is of interest to you, that way you are more likely to keep the blog going and find time to write content that is of interest to your readers. Your passion for the subject will come out in the quality of your work. Your blog should be kept fresh with up to date articles relating to current trends. Having said that, if you want to monetize your blog you should be aware that certain categories of blogs will earn more money than others. For example, Insurance, finance, vacation and fitness blogs generally pay better in terms of advertising revenue than a blog about celebrities. However with a bit of research you should be able to find a reasonably well paying category that still is of interest to you.
Start small and work up
When starting out in the blogosphere there is no need to purchase expensive hosting plans and software. You can get a good basic plan with a company like Hostgator, this site is hosted with them and we’ve never had an issue yet! Then you just need to download some free software from WordPress, maybe a free theme if you want to jazz things up a bit and away you go.
Attract visitors and gain some loyal followers
Once you have your blog up and running you will need to publicize it in order to get some visitors. The easiest way to do it is through social media. Create accounts with Facebook, Twitter, Mixx, Stumbleupon and Delicious plus a few others and update these accounts whenever you make a new entry in your blog. Over time you will start to attract a loyal band of followers to your good quality content. Submitting articles to sites such as ezinearticles and goarticles are another way to attract visitors to your site. Always be sure to include 1 or 2 keyword links back to your site in the author bio section of these sites, this will help to improve your sites reputation in the eyes of Google.
Become active in the blogosphere
The idea of blogging was to connect people and share ideas that could be debated and commented on and this theory still holds today. For your blog to be successful you also need to be active in forums, discussions and other blog’s that are relevant to yours. You need to build your blog’s reputation and an easy way to do this is by commenting or posting in forums with a link back to your blog. Google loves one way relevant links.
Monetize your blog
The easiest way to monetize a blog is by using Google Adsense. By inserting Google’s code in your blog, relevant ads will be displayed and you will be paid a share of the revenue every time someone clicks on an ad. It’s very easy to set up and there are many WordPress widgets that can do everything for you leaving you just to focus on quality content. However there are many ways to monetize a blog so you should consider other opportunities depending on your subject. For example, if you’ve recently had a baby and wanted to share the knowledge you have picked up on which baby’s pushchairs are the best then you may decide to make a blog to review pushchairs. One way to monetize such a blog would be to have an affiliate link to Amazon within each review, any sale resulting a reader clicking on that link would earn you a commission. The beauty of being an affiliate is simplicity; all the credit card processing, dispatching and customer care is handled by the affiliate leaving you free from the daily chores of running an online store.
Who’s says blogging doesn’t pay?
Just to give you an idea of what is possible in the world of blogging, Darren Rowse, founder and owner of a number of blogs such as Problogger.net and Digital Photography School was reported to be earning around $20,000 a month from Google Adsense alone. Not bad for a career that started as a hobby!
This information was extremely helpful but I was just wondering if there are any other points that can be made to help someone actually start a blog. i.e great sites recommended and how to access advertising to earn an income. Kind Regards.
Hi Sheri, there are lots of great sites that make creating a blog easy. Have a look at Blogger and WordPress, both will help you create your blog within minutes. For advertising, Google Adsense is a natural first choice. Google adds contextual adverts to your blog and you get paid for every click from a visitor. There are also numerous other ways to monetize a blog. You could create a blog as an affiliate, take a look at clickbank for ideas – you get paid for every sale of a product. There are some other good affiliate sites such as commission junction, tradedoubler and shareasale. Hope these tips help!
Would love to create a blog which brings current and expanded interpretation to existing scripture.
Any advice or thoughts?
Don’t currenly have a website, as mine was hacked into. A new one will be forthcoming.
where would be the best place to look to see the competition in blogging..just to be sure noone else is blogging the exact same thing?
Google provides a keyword tool that should give you a rough idea of how competitive a subject is, depending on the reason for your blog, I think the most important factor is to write about something that interests you. Perhaps focus on hobbies and interests, check out the competition and then consider how you could do things better. Good content is key and will keep visitors returning again and again. Good luck!
Sounds interesting, I know absolutely nothing about scriptures but I’m sure there’s a markets for it. I’d recommend Tumblr and WordPress for creating blogs, both will get you online with the minimal effort and are pretty expandable. Good luck!