Make Money Blogging For Beginners
And just to get something straight between us: blogging has traditionallly been about online journaling: putting those thoughts and opinions into the universe. It is possible to make money this way. But just open yourself to the idea also that blogging is more often used by successful internet marketers as a cog in the internet marketing wheel. Blogging platforms offer the would-be-money-maker a way to put a website up quickly and be able to update a website quickly. Blogging software doesn't care if you're updating the world about your love life or about the latest product launches in XYZ niche.
Keep that in mind as you are on your adventure!
Blogging Journals: A Fun (But Hard) Way To Fame
but when it works, it's always a great story!
Thousands...
In fact you might be one of them.
I'm guessing it has to be because of the treatment of blogging by the media. TV and Movies still treat blogging as a way to journal online. Oftentimes it is used as a vehicle for a storyline (which is usually pretty entertaining).
Then you hear about the true stories like Julie Powell's blog which became a book which became a movie "Julie and Julia". Blessings to those who "make it". It's not easy to make the big times. Still, personal journals can make a bit of money through various ad placements. It's not the same as selling a blog but you can do quite well with the personal journal with consistent blogging, getting lots of readers, and a little bit of luck (like youtube videos going viral).
Setting out to do it to make money, that might be difficult because it takes time and luck. But doing it for fun (journaling that is) means you will welcome also any money that comes your way. That's the best approach to personal journal blogging to make money ..to not look for it (kinda tricky huh?).
How To Make Money Blogging
The Real Scoop
All internet marketing systems and online businesses follow three general steps. These steps are:
1. Find a product to sell or niche to market in
2. Create your web presence (e.g. blog)
3. Drive traffic
That is all there is to it. Yes, of course, there are a lot of details as there are many ways to accomplish those three steps, but just understanding these three simple steps from the outset will help you from the start. And the above three steps works for just about any product or any business so you can continue to use these three steps for multiple online endeavors.
To make money blogging, you still need something to sell. The two choices of product selling are pretty straightforward: sell an actual product or sell yourself as a product. To sell an actual product we would call that a Niche Blog or Product Blog. To sell yourself as a product this would actually be a Personal Blog. Both types of blogs, Niche/Product Blog and Personal Blog, fit into the above three steps very easily.
Personal Blog System and the three internet marketing steps:
1. Find something to blog about. This could be a specific niche (e.g. dog training), or it could be many different niches: whatever you want to express your opinion about. One day it could be about various high definition TVs, the next day it could be about baby
2. Blog about it. This is building your online presence.
3. Publicize your blog. This is the "driving traffic" part of your blog. Even if you have the best blog in the world with the most beautifully written articles, unless people know how to find it, your stuff won't get read. This involves what we internet marketers call backlink building. In effect, get links on the internet back to your website so that people (and search engines) can start finding it. There are a lot of ways to do this which is definitely a subject for another article. Just know the best way to do this is build a large number of backlinks and a wide variety of backlinks.
Niche Blog Model. Your three steps would be:
1. Find a niche you want your entire blog to be about e.g. dog training, and then find a product in that niche to sell on your website OR Find a product you want to blog about and this will determine your niche
2. Find topics in your niche (e.g. how to potty train a dog) and blog about it. You should write many articles about one topic as well as find many topics to write about. Having a variety will build a great online presence
3. Drive Traffic: this means backlink building similar to the Personal Blog model.
Whether you create a Personal Blog or a Niche Blog, once you get going and get readers it is fairly easy to make money.
In other words, the more traffic, the more money. You can place ad banners on your blog, place google adsense ads on your blog, and affiliate product links on your blog. Plus, with each blog post you can probably find an affiliate product or link related to that blog post. The products will vary for Personal Blogs since your topics will vary. For a Niche Blog you can specialize and continue to plug the same product (e.g. your favorite dog training manual for a dog training blog).
These three steps is really all there is to make money blogging, or to make money on the internet for that matter. It is a simple concept. The deployment itself is not complicated, it is just a lot of time and work and can be quite tedious. However, in concept and even in deployment it is easy to understand, and I hope that this article has given you insight that anyone and everyone has the potential to make money online and make money blogging.
How To Find A Niche To Start A Blog About
Finding A Niche Is Important To Make Money Blogging
How To Find A Niche To Start A Blog About
Whether you are an newbie or experienced blogger, the skill of finding topics to blog about is a great skill to develop. Finding niches to start a blog post about or even to start a blog entirely about is a skill which takes some time to develop. Here are five things to think about when you go niche hunting.
Before we begin, I just want to give a quick explanation of what niche blogging is: It is exactly what it sounds like: blogging about a specific niche. Often times this is for the purpose of selling a niche product, such as a dog training manual. Other times it is for marketing oneself as an expert in a niche, such as a real estate flipper. For many people who want to start making money on the internet, niche blogs and niche product sites are an easy way to start. For some people they already are passionate about a hobby that monetizes well. For others, they may not be sure what niche to blog about.
With that little intro out of the way, here are five steps to finding a good niche to start a blog about.
First: It is a good idea if there is already money being spent in that niche.
Money being spent usually means a niche which is desirable and will get traffic whether or not you plan to monetize your blog. While some people want to try and create something brand new, Niche Blogging is more about what has already shown to work. If there is money in the niche, your Niche Blog is a way of being able to stick your hand in that flow of money.
Second: Figure out if you have a product or service that has value in that niche market.
Niche Blogging and Niche Marketing is about providing products and services. Therefore, even if you find a good niche, you will want to make sure that you can then provide something of value (for free or for sale) to all those people who are interested. This is one reason affiliate products are popular: you can find products that are already being sold and either sell the same product or improve upon it and sell a new one.
Third: take focused action!
The overwhelming majority of people who begin niche marketing ultimately fail because they have no clear idea of what it is they're trying to do. What you need to focus on doing is finding a niche that you can attack with a variety of different traffic methods. Remember, the name of the game on the Internet is to have a niche market that you can actually make money from.
Fourth: Pick a niche that interests you.
Pick something that if all else fails at least you are interested in what you are doing. If you are really interested in basketball, why then choose a niche blog about wedding planning? A lot of internet marketing is trial and error and tedious tasks: being interested in your niche will make it fun for you and then before you know it you'll find you have traffic to your blog from the niche community you are targeting.
Fifth: think about supply and demand
If there is a huge supply of niche marketing sites and not much demand, maybe it's better to pick another niche. Give yourself a reasonable opportunity to be a success online. And this will be made only more difficult if you pick a niche that is saturated with more supply than demand.
Keeping these five things in mind, use them and try many different niches. It takes experience, trial and error, and a bit of luck to succeed. If you do not succeed at first, don't let it bother you too much. Just keep trying and keep thinking about all five factors: a good buyer niche, a good product, willingness to do all the daily tasks, a niche that you are interested in, and a reasonable chance to succeed with the competition in that niche.
The fortunate thing about online businesses is that they cost next to nothing to start, especially compared to a regular storefront business. So you will have many opportunities to fail in between all your successes. Just keep in mind all of these factors for choosing your niche markets. The more times you try, the higher your potential income will be from all the sites you put up. Keep this all in mind and hey, what are you waiting for? Go and research those niches and start a blog now!
Backlink Building Part 1
What Is A Backlink And Why You Need Them
Most website owners and bloggers fall into three categories:1) You have a website (probably for business) and are wondering why you don't have any visitors
2) You have a website and have heard that you need to drive traffic by using backlinks but you're not sure what that is
3) Other (just so everyone else is not left out!)
Well, you've come to the right place. In this article I will first explain what a backlink is, how it is used to get more visitors to your website, and then a brief summary of the tried and true methods to build backlinks
WHAT IS A BACKLINK?
Anywhere out on the internet where there is a link to your website that is a single backlink. That could be from somewhere as organized as your local chamber of commerce online directory to something as viral as a youtube clip with your link in the description.
HOW DOES A BACKLINK DRIVE TRAFFIC?
There are two main ways that links send traffic to your site: directly and through search engines
The first way is that anyone who sees your link may click on it to visit your site. That is what I mean by direct traffic.
The second and more important way is that the more backlinks you have, the higher you will rank in search engines. That is the simple version. There is a more complex explanation behind this when you get into the nitty gritty of it but we'll keep to the simple version for now.
Let's put examples behind these two methods: Let's say you have a website about dog training. In the first method: A user may go to a website where the author has put a link to your site. This user may click on that link and visit your website. In the second method: A user may type in the words "dog training" in a search engine like Google or Yahoo. The higher your page is listed, the more likely they will click on your link and visit your website
HOW DOES A SEARCH ENGINE USE BACKLINKS?
Way before search engine optimization was even its own acronym and when netscape and mosaic were the only browsers out there, websites were such a novel thing. The technology was new and exciting and when people found very cool sites they were quick to put a link to them for technology sake.
Then came the search engines. And crawling and spidering. Search engines started paying attention to this, seeing which pages got a lot of links. As the algorithm got more defined, it paid attention to the type of page providing the link. The more popular that page was, the more "juice" that link had.
One thing algorithms paid attention to is the "anchor text" of a link. For the longest time anchor text often just was "Click here" (which is not very valuable for search engines). Then people started including words with the links or near the links, such as "Dog Training Manual".
Instead of using
CLICK HERE for a great Dog Training Manual
People now use
Click here for a great DOG TRAINING MANUAL
Search engines loved this type of descriptive anchor text better as it could use it to rank the site that was behind the anchor text more accurately. If the anchor text used was "Dog Training Manual" it would know to rank you strongly for "Dog Training Manual" and to a lesser extent "Dog Training"
So the key points to the value of a backlink: the anchor text used with the link and the "quality" or "authority" of the page providing the link. And algorithms continue to evolve and give weight to many other factors but this is enough to get you started.
Now that you understand what a backlink is and how backlinks are used to drive traffic, you need to know how to properly build them to drive as much traffic as possible to your site. Keep an eye out for part two of this article series: how to create a backlink and how to properly build large amounts of backlinks to get as much traffic as possible!
In the meantime, if you want to learn more about backlink buiding and starting
a blog? Come by my site for more info!
by howdoyoustartablog
I love all things internet related. I'm a linux guy during the day and a professional amateur tinkerer at night. I also love running, basketball, re... more »
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