There is a lot of buzz these days around blogging for money. In truth, it is more difficult to make money this way than some may lead you to believe. However, if approached properly, blogging can become a very profitable exercise. Let’s discuss some easy, practical steps you can take towards creating an online blogging presence that will make money for you.
First and foremost, a personal little blog is not going to do it. Some people believe they can blog about their daily lives and make money. I hate to break your bubble, but your life isn’t that interesting. Don’t take offense – nobody’s life is that interesting! If you want to pull traffic, you are going to need to offer a topic or topics that interest people, and in many cases answer questions that people have. For instance, an Internet Marketing blog might have all general IM posts, or may be divided into sections for PPC posts, article marketing posts, affiliate marketing posts, and product creation posts. Such a blog offers a subject many people are interested in, many subdivisions of that subject that people want more information about, and the posts can give great tips, advice, or share experience that can help others.
After beginning a blog focused around your niche, sprinkle a little Adsense around it. Try to keep your Adsense in places that receive the most focus – the top of your blog (specifically top left if you can), between paragraphs in the text, or at the bottom right after the text ends, for people who are looking for more information after reading your post. These locations seem to do well. However, making money with an Adsense-only blog can be very difficult. There is one more thing you should do to make your blog more profitable.
Once you have established yourself a little and built some rapport with your readers, you want to begin sprinkling affiliate products into your posts. Don’t overdo this or you will run your readership away! However, in a post describing a particular problem, you may post a link to a product that solves that problem. That link would be your affiliate link, and any sales resulting from your blog post’s link would pay commissions to you. You might even want to place one or two graphical or text affiliate links to useful, relative products in the sidebar or sidebars of your blog. Be sure you don’t make it difficult to search your blog for all the ads and affiliate links! You want your users to feel that you are blogging for them first and foremost, and your affiliate links are merely helpful suggestions you are making.
By establishing yourself in a niche, offering useful information to your readers, and sprinkling your blog with tastefully-positioned ads and affiliate links, you will begin to see an income coming through your blog. Congratulations, you have succeeded! Now continue to tweak and test what works well and what doesn’t so that you can continue to make your blog more and more profitable for yourself, while becoming more and more appealing to your target audience.
Good luck and happy blogging!
