Q:’Iyabo,I have heard so much about blogging and how people are making good money with it but I am still skeptical.Do you think I can make a living with blogging?’

A:Blogging is the new way to deliver information on the internet, and is exactly what people have been looking for. The word blog comes from the phrase “web log”, but combined together.So what is a blog and how can you earn money from them?

What is a Blog?

Blogging is a way of collecting links to webpages and sharing thoughts and ideas with people online.Blogs (or Weblogs) are basically online journals or diaries which are great for sharing information and ideas.I call a blog an online journal that is frequently updated.If you understand the concept of keeping a diary,you will understand the concept of blogging.

Blogger.com says:

“A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world.”

As well as text, blogs often contain audio, music, images and video.They’re also really easy to make, so you can have one even if you aren’t very technical.Anything can be posted instantly to a blog.

Now,Why should you blog?

Surfing’s no fun if you can’t tell people what you’ve found.How many times have you sent e-mails to your mates with the address of a particularly interesting web page, annotated with your own hilarious comments? Wouldn’t it be good to get your own web page where you could publish these comments, plus the links you find, turn it into a daily journal of thoughts and ideas and make the whole thing available to the world?

Well now you can, and if you do, you’ll be joining the phenomenon that has become ‘blogging’.Before I tell you how to blog your way to the bank,let me quickly tell you the history of blogs.

Blogging has become something of a big thing in the last few years, and some of the biggest and best known weblogs attract the kind of traffic that even big name e-commerce sites would be jealous of.Weblogs are more than pages of links – they tend to reflect the personalities of their owners. They are personal web pages,updated very often.

They are the product of their owners’ imaginations, interests and wit, and it’s probably this personal touch which has made them so popular, especially for political issues.

The word ‘weblog’ was coined by Jorn Barger,owner of the long-established and extremely popular Robot Wisdom weblog. You can get a lot more about the history of weblogs from his site at robotwisdom.com.

Which Blogging Platform to Use

There are several blogging platforms but the most common are Blogger, Wordpress,Typepad,Reallifelog,etc

Of all these platforms,I know blogger as well as wordpress inside out but I prefer wordpress above blogger any day because it will be hosted on your own server.If you want to use your blog to make money,I think you should be prepared to spend some money to create your own blog.Am I saying you should not use the free blogger? No. But if you use blogger and one day Google phases out blogger,what happens to your blog as well as all the work you have put into it? Did I hear you say Google cannot phase out blogger? Ok,company policies change and only recently,Google announced the suspension of Google Adsense referrals in all countries except Japan,US and Canada.Do you now see why you should go for a paid blog? I only advise my students to use a free platform just to test if blogging is for them.Once they are sure of that,they can then go for a paid platform.Now,let this sink into your sub-conscious.Serious bloggers use wordpress blogs.

The One thing You Need to Blog for Profit!

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.

Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.

To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you. However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in order to make a profit isn’t easy. As more and more blogs appear each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is no longer enough to get attention.

You need to be able to market your blog effectively. Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati, and once your readers know that you update frequently they will return to your site on a regular basis. However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody is reading your page, so don’t skimp on the time that you spend drawing visitors to your site.

To make your dreams of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making contacts in the blog community, and following other established modes of winning traffic. Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight.

Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires takes time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several months before you are able to turn much of a profit. Try to stay committed to your blogging project during this initial rough period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.

Topics to Write about on Your Blog

Once you have the blog set up, you will then need to post content about a particular topic. You will have to find out what people are searching for, and then start writing content around that topic.

However you can not just pick a topic out of the blue, the topic has to be something that has enough people searching for it, as well as a topic that doesn’t have a lot of competition.

If you pick the wrong topic, you may end up writing content for a year without seeing any real success with it. You may only receive a few visitors to your blog because only a hand full of people are actually searching for that topic each month. Or you may only see a few visitors because there is too much competition and your blog is not near the top of the search engine results.

In order to make a decent amount of money with Google Adsense and other affiliate programs, you will need to find the right profitable niche (topic).

But there is good news…

I have found a great free report called “A Simple, Step-By-Step Formula to Uncover Red-Hot Niches”.

It’s a packed 47 page report that shows you the exact steps that can be used to find profitable niches. The author,Myleena Phan has used these steps to bring in over $15,000 in revenue from her web sites network.

You can start by building free blogs at blogger, then once you have some profits coming in, expand your sites with your own web hosting and then maybe you can even start hiring others to build the sites for You!

Grab the free report here.

Making Money With Your Blog

You can create multiple streams of income with your blog but I will only talk about Google Adsense in this article.Will post a comprehensive article on making money from your blog later.

If you’re looking at Google’s AdSense program to make money with your blog you’re surely asking yourself how much you could make from such a program. You probably think you can’t make as much as you can from traditional advertising schemes.

Google, of course, keeps a great deal of secrecy regarding how much AdWords advertisers pay per each click directed to their site and the same applies for how much AdSense banner holders make from their websites and blogs

While there’s nothing official, rumors circulate around the Internet concerning the amount of cash a blogger can earn by using AdSense. And many people (illegally) disclose how much they have been making with AdSense. There are stories of people raising over one thousand dollars per month using AdSense, some as much as $1000 a day just through blogging.

There are also stories of people exceeding $100,000.00 per month but it’s a bit hard to believe such stories. The truth to the matter is that if you have a small blog and you just want it to support itself with a little extra income, and you don’t wish to reach your pocket for its maintenance costs you can easily do this with AdSense.

AdSense is also very good for people who host a lot of pages or very large community blogs. Even if the said pages or blogs don’t generate a lot of traffic individually, every click counts and you can earn up with a lot of money by doing this. And that just goes to prove that sometimes quantity matters nearly as much as quality.

There’s no telling how much money you’re going to make by using Google’s AdSense program on your blog but you can sort of tell for yourself, before actually starting, by taking a few things into consideration.

First, is the amount of visits your blog may now get every day. While there’s no way to estimate precisely on this, you can generally make a safe assumption that if you have a lot of clicks per day you’ll be making good money.

Also, this depends on what exactly your blog is about. If your site is about anything popular (music, sex, whatever) you’re bound to get a lot of banner clicks. These have a coefficient associated with them, called the CTR (click through ratio).

Basically, what it translates to is that if a large proportion of your site’s visitors click the ads you’ll be making more money. And the best way to do this is to have some popular content in your site, ensuring the links direct users towards popular items as well.

Then of course, there’s the position and number of ads on your blog. While you don’t want to overdo it, having many ads will undoubtedly generate more income for you as a webmaster. Do not however believe, that if you just add a lot of ads in an important portion of your site, visitors could always just skip them (and be assured that many do just that).

There’s something between an art and a science to positioning your ads. People generally look in certain places and never look in others, and knowing this a website author and/or webmaster can do a great deal of things to increase his earnings with AdSense.

All in all, the amount of money you make with AdSense depends on many factors. But if you have a site with interesting contents and/or many pages, and if you see a constantly large amount of traffic every day, you can bet you’ll be making a lot of money with AdSense.

Even if you aren’t in the above categories, AdSense is still worth using on your blog because there’s very little hassle in setting it up, and many times it can help financially support the site, whilst being a nice bonus to get through the mail at the end of the month.Personally,I have made some good money from adsense using my network of blogs and I will soon post evidence on this blog.So,if you want to use adsense on your blog,I give you my word that you will not regret it.

Written by Iyabo Oyawale(2007),you can use the above article and all the others on my blog f-r-e-e- if you include the following:

Iyabo Oyawale assists people achieve success in small business,Internet Marketing and in life generally.You can download her 100% free success manuals at the free ebooks section of http://naijanetwarriors.com and http://askiyabooyawale.com.

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