How to Make Money Blogging

You need to be posting original content. Sure, you can have a look around the internet researching into your topic or niche. This is how we all learn, but don't copy. Don't see some information that you think is worded well and get the idea, hey, that would look great just as it is on my blog. It wont get you anywhere at all. Google doesn't take kindly to copycats.

By all means, use the information but put it into your own words. By doing this you are creating original content. Original content is what will get a higher ranking on google and you wont loose any friends this way either.

When submitting your blog posts to bookmarking sites etc and there is room for an intro to what you are posting, don't just copy the first few lines, re-write them. This again will be seen as original content.

If you haven't started to use YouTube yet, then you really need to. Google loves the videos and by including these in your posts it will increase your ranking. Don't be shy, I know at first it can all seem a bit daunting but have you seen some of the videos on there ? Yours will be great.

Of course you can just use other peoples videos if they are free to use of course, but by making your own you can get your point accross exactly as you want. You can make how to videos, funny videos, music videos - it's really your choice. Trust me once you start you will be addicted - a bit like Squidoo and blogging. I now have over 100 videos uploaded on my You Tube channel. Below are just a few. As you can see I make a video about anything :)

I use my mobile phone to record the videos on mainly, but I also have a camcorder - you should see how many full discs we have of the boys when they were little. They dribbled - we recorded it, they drooled - we recorded it we even recorded them sleeping.

Now that you have your blog all done and its ready for posting and promoting - wait, did you put the tags in ? Ok, go back and do that first.

Tags are other keywords that relate to your post. Include as many as you can find, the more the merrier. For example going back to my scabies lens - I have the tags there on scabies cure, treatment for scabies, etc, etc. I again reseached into these keywords and chose the ones with little competition. I always try to find 40+ tags, may sound like a big number but with the right keyword tool, it won't be a problem. You don't want to miss out on someone wanting to buy just what you are selling because you didn't include that tag do you ?

I heard about She Told me over at Lensmasters Lounge on squidoo (love that place). She Told Me is a place where you can promote your blog and get paid doing it. All you need is an account with Google adsense, if you don't have one get one here Google Adsense and they also earn you money with Chitika. Google adsense is great to add to your blog aswell so its important to get an account going with them.

How She Told me works is that you put in your link to your blog post and do a summary of at least 200 words, remember original content - don't copy the first few lines, re-write them. Make use of the tags section, they let you use loads. Then submit. Its as easy as that.

Others can then vote your submissions up or down (rarely do they go down). Try to make your titles a bit quirky, this helps. Contributing by voting others up and leaving comments will result in you getting more visitors and votes and revenue. Each submission creates a free web page (don't you just love free traffic?) and when visitors click on the google adsense ads, you earn.

Chitika is the same, there is a link to sign up for them on She Told Me. Its in the same place as where you put your adsense ID. It takes a bit longer to get approved for a Chitika account, but while you are waiting you will still be earning with Google Adsense.

Xomba works in the same way as She Told Me really. The difference there though is that you have 2 options when posting content. You can either post an article or post a bookmark. An article is where you write at least 150 words on a subject that you choose. The subject could be a 'how to' or a 'review' or whatever else you choose. Whereas a bookmark is linking to a webpage. So if you have done a blog post and you want to submit it to Xomba then just post it as a bookmark. Join Xomba here

As with She Told Me you will have to do a summary, but remember again this is fresh content linking to your work which google will love. You also need a Google Adsense account with Xomba to earn money. The google ads will appears near your posts - if you don't already have a Google Adsense account, get one here, Join Google Adsense, it's free.

That's it for Xomba, oh I nearly forgot, try to contribute to the site by checking out other peoples submissions, putting a comment or vote here and there. This often makes them want to return the favour :)
Click here to Join Xomba

Free Images Online can be hard to come by too. What with all the copyright issues it can be very confusing and you can end up not knowing whether or not it is OK for you to use an image. In the beginning it was searching for free images online that used to take up the majority of my time. Now I have found a few good sites that I can get decent images from free. The main ones are All Posters and Dreamstime.

All Posters is exactly as its title sounds, it is a Posters site. You can find images of almost anything there, all that they ask is that you link back to their site. You join the All Posters affiliate program and as long as you link back (which they give you a code to copy and paste) you are fine. Here are a couple of All Posters images to give you examples, but honest they have loads:

I picked this one because it's cute, don't you think ?

and this one as its a Squid, on squidoo, good hey?

Check out All Posters for yourself:

Dreamstime is a great site too. I was using free images for a couple of months - you don't even have to link back :) and then I got told that I had reached my limit (not sure what the limit is). I purchased a pack of 25 credits. The packages start from $12. The good thing is though once you have credits then you can freely use their free images. I also have 24 credits left aswell - I find I don't need to use my credit because the free images are good enough.

All the images on this lens are free images online from All Posters or Dreamstime.

Backlinks are one of the best ways to get more traffic to your blog. Wherever you can write an article and link back to your blog, write one and wherever you can bookmark your blog posts do so. The more the merrier. As I said earlier in the intro there are now a few places where you can create a backlink and earn whilst doing so, well I come to those in just a second.

When doing a summary or article again remember to use original content. Some sites will rate higher with google than others. My aim in this lens is to give you the ones that I have found perform the best. If you have a backlink to your site let's say with She Told Me (below) then you will often find that your post in there rates higher with google than your actual blog - unless of course your blog is already on page 1 ? If it is please send me some tips :)

So your masterpiece is done :) Wait, hang on a minute what keywords did you use ? Keywords are the words that people search for on google. I will use my own squidoo lenses here as an example. I have a lens that is called Home Remedies for Scabies, now I could have called that lens simply 'scabies' or 'curing scabies' but I researched into finding keywords or you could call them phrases, that were being googled for, but there was low competition. Low competition means that other webmasters were not using these keywords or phrases.

My lens, Home Remedies for Scabies is now on page 1 of google. If you type in home remedy for scabies you should find it there, because of this, this is the lens that gets the best traffic.

Squidoo is my favourite place on the web. It's easy to make friends and it's just a lovely community of talented folk here willing to help newbies. The modules that you are given to work with make lensmaking easy and fun. So go have fun and Click here to Make Your Lens today