With the rising cost of everything and with people’s desires to work from home to have more time with their families, sooner or later everyone thinks about blogging for a living. We have all heard the stories about people that have made the transition to working full time and getting paid full time incomes to do nothing more than run their own blog. Many would love nothing more than to spend their days in the comfortable surroundings of their own home, possibly even surrounded by their own families, but there is a little more to full time blogging than that.

While it sounds easy to most people, blogging for a living is anything but easy. Before serious money can be made with blogging, the blog owner has to build and construct their blog from scratch. After a blog is built, there is a need for a significant amount of time to be spent on maintaining it. Blogs are continually growing websites and need their content regularly updated. This regularly updating can take a lot of time, especially if it is done well. Once a blog has been built and is operational, then its owner can take the step of blogging for money. The blogger can now sign up at any of the large number of paid blogging sites and start taking assignments once their blog or blogs are approved. Full Story »

There are many ways to make money online, and blogging is one of the most popular methods. There may be many reasons you want to make money from your blog; perhaps you want to  get some extra pocket money from your free time, or maybe you want to use it as a full-blown career. It won’t happen overnight, but there are people making money by blogging professionally. Here are some steps to get you started.

1. Take Action

One of the mistakes that many people make after deciding to use blogging to make money is not taking enough action. Perhaps you already read a number of ‘how to make money online’ blogs for tips on starting up. Whilst many of these sites offer the same advice, there are some great tips to be learned. However, any good make money blog will also tell you that you need to take action as well as learning what to do. You might think you need to take time before you are ready to begin, but the truth is you will never see results if you don’t take action. Full Story »

There are a great number of people these days looking for different ways to make money online. Gas prices are not the only thing going up and people are having a hard time making ends meet. Many people turn to trying to make money online as a way to supplement their incomes. One of the more popular ways to earn money online these days is by blogging. Most people have heard of paid blogging, but many don’t know how to start. Although it takes a great deal of time and effort, especially in the beginning, getting paid to blog is indeed a very easy thing to do.

Quick steps to getting started in paid blogging:

Anyone interested to getting started in paid blogging must first have at least one blog. Starting a blog is rather easy, there are a number of platforms available online that host blogs for free. If someone wants them or their blog to be taken extremely seriously, they should by their own domain name and pay for hosting their own site. This is surprisingly affordable and the cost shouldn’t impede anyone from starting their own blog. Once a domain name and web hosting are purchased, a prospective blogger has to decide on a content management system or blogging platform. One of the easiest and most versatile blogging software packages out there is Wordpress, and best of all it is free. Once the software is installed, getting up and running is easy. Full Story »

When you run a website or a blog, you will probably be interested to see the ways in which you can encourage more users, and to see the progress that you have been making in this area. One way of judging the progress of your blog’s content, and therefore the visitors that it might attract, is by studying its bounce rate. It might sound confusing, but it is in fact a very simple indicator of how well your blog is doing.

Firstly, it is important to know what a bounce rate is. The bounce rate is basically the amount or percentage of users who visit your blog but leave without looking at any of the other pages. Often, statistics software will show you how long visitors stay on your homepage, and whether they leave straight away (hence the term ‘bounce’) or continue to look at other pages of your site. For these reasons, the bounce rate can be a good indication of how attractive your homepage or your content is. However, it is also important to realise that a high bounce rate does not necessarily mean your blog is failing. Full Story »

With the increase in people turning to the internet and blogging to earn money, there are a number of issues that surround this activity. The question that blogging can make money is undoubted, though the amount of money can vary and in most cases will not be as much as a full time job. One of the questions that seems to be popping up recently is whether blogging can be considered a business in its own right. There are many business using blogging to promote their product or service, but when does the blog itself become the business?

There is a certain opinion that blogging is not a business in itself, but a means to a further end. For example, many businesses will use a blog as part of their business plan to increase their customer base and sales, but the blog itself is not the business. In this case the blog is the tool by which the business gains more custom, as a form of marketing. It can prove as a successful method to bring in new clients and create more sales. However, what about pro-bloggers who use their blogs as their only source of income? These bloggers did not always have a business before their blog, and all of their income is from their blog, or range of blogs. Full Story »

To be a successful blogger there are a number of things that have to happen. A successful blogger needs to blog about something that they are both passionate about and knowledgeable of. But loving your subject matter and knowing a great deal about it are not enough. There are a great many things that go into making a blog successful and most people focus on the marketing and execution of the daily updating of the content. But, without credibility and legitimacy, it doesn’t matter how the marketing and execution is performed because the blog will have a hard time sustaining itself after it is launched.

One of the best ways to gain a look of credibility is to have your blog hosted on its own domain name. There are examples of successful blogs that are hosted on free blogging platforms like Blogger and Wordpress, but they are few and far between. When a visitor comes to your website and sees that you are using a free host instead of your own domain name, one of the things that they may think is that you are not either an expert or a success in the field you are blogging about, or that maybe you are doing this part time and not taking it seriously. While domain names are relatively cheap to register, having one gives your blog the aura that it is credible because it is independent of free hosting sites. Full Story »

When promoting any blog, whether it is business related or personal, you may have heard of a key goal of gaining subscribers to that blog. Subscribers are those users that have added your blog to a list of blogs they regularly read, and regular readership is key to a successful blog - especially when it comes to repeat business. However, gaining subscribers can often be difficult in the early stages of your blog, so here are some ways in which you can quickly increase your RSS subscriber list.

1. Give them a good reason to subscribe

The most important factor if you are looking for subscribers is to give them a reason to subscribe. This reason will ultimately come down to what your blog has to offer - is it informative, interesting, and frequently updated? If you have these points down you can begin to work on gaining more subscribers.

2. Give them an incentive to subscribe

You may have great content on your blog but still be lacking the subscribers you had hoped for. At first, it may be a good idea to offer an incentive to subscribe to your blog. This could mean entry into a prize draw, though most blogs in the early stages do not want to risk losing money by offering expensive prizes. Instead, you could give away a free article or eBook every time a user subscribes. Not only will this give the user an incentive to subscribe, but it is a perfect opportunity to advertise some of your products and services within an eBook that is also interesting for users to read. Full Story »

One of the biggest goals that any blogger has is to create the kind of content that attracts traffic, but more importantly attracts repeat traffic. Without traffic, a blog is really nothing more than an online diary kept by the blog owner. Without traffic, the dreams of success that the blog owner has will never come to be. There will be no money made through participation in a pay per click advertising program, no money made through the selling of advertisements, and no money made through the direct selling of products.

Here are some quick looks at different ways to get traffic to your blog:

Forum Participation

There are a number of online forums and message boards that cater to specific niche subjects. The trick is to find a few forums that cover topics related to your blog’s topic and then register and become an active member there. Help people out by answering their questions and become a valued participant in the forum. Most forums allow you to place a link back to your blog in a signature file. This link will then appear at the bottom of every post you make and once you become a respected member of a forum, the link will be clicked on by those that read your posts. Full Story »

Just what separates the average Joe from millionaires?  Some studies would suggest it is the ability of the millionaires to set goals and track them annually.  These same techniques can be the difference between having an average blog and a wildly successful blog.

To reach your blogging potential you must set your goals and track the progress you make towards achieving those goals.

Establish your Baseline - Whenever you start something, you’re starting from scratch, zilch, nada and this holds true for any project.  You have a baseline of zero.  You would have trouble finding yourself in a search engine with a compass, map, two hands and a flashlight. 

Is that a bad thing?  It does not have to be, because at least you know where you’re starting.  From there it is a matter of setting goals, planning and tracking your progress in achieving them.

A Credible Business Needs a Voice and a blog is no different.  Give your blog an identity, a face to differentiate yourself from the average Joe down the block.  Visitors relate and form relationships with people and could care less about the organization they serve.  When blogging you have a powerful platform to connect with your visitors and establish yourself in your market. Full Story »

Blog promotion is one of the toughest things to master in the world of blogging. Without people visiting a blog, there is little reason for the blogger to continue updating their blog. Without traffic, it is questionable if there is even a reason for a blog to exist. The only way to get this traffic is to promote the blog effectively so that people have both the desire and opportunity to follow a link back to the blog.

One of the best ways to promote a blog is for a blogger to comment on the posts of another blogger. This type of strategy is beneficial for a number of reasons and has the ability to pay off both at the moment it is done as well as long down the road too. It is not enough though to just comment on any blog that they come across though, a blogger should seek out blogs that post about either the same subject matter as they do or a subject that is closely related to theirs. There are a number of other tips that can go a long way in making the commenting efforts of a blogger more effective. Full Story »