Friday, December 19, 2008

How To Make Your Blog An Online Business

By Wendy Smith

Blogging began years ago as a method for people to link up to other people and share stories, pictures and experiences. It was regarded as a great personal journal type tool that was used to leave their mark on the internet through their encounters.

Blogs then evolved to become excellent Marketing Tools as well as a medium to make money off of. There are a few different ways to earn income from blogging. Here are a few:

Adsense ads - The popular search engines offer a way to make a little additional income with any blog or internet site. The idea is to position these advertisements on your web site and once a visitor clicks on an advert from your site, you make a pre-determined sum of money. The more clicks you are able to get from your web site visitors, the more you are able to make. There are a few rules, so if you decide to go down this path, make sure you find out what not to do prior to signing up for their programs.

Product Reviews - There are some websites that you can sign up with that can help you connect with other companies who need people to review their products and get them some exposure on your blogs. Usually the main requirement for this is to have a blog that's been around for awhile and has a fair amount of visitors. Those companies would pay you a specified amount to review their product on your blog.

Contextual Links - Some business or website owners will pay a blogger to post one of their links within their blog posts. It may be the owners themselves getting hold of the blog writer or a company that acts as the middleman. Those businesses will find blogs that relate to their companies sites, so the links supplied on the blogs will be search engine friendly. This is a great method to build some additional traffic for a web site.

Selling products - Using a blog is another means to sell your own products from. Those businesses that sell food container items or home dcor items use blogs a great deal to help sell their products and make additional money online.

What skills would you need?

There isn't much skill involved in this type of business except the ability to market your blog. You would want to research blogging as much as possible to learn some of the tricks of the trade to get your blog popular.

What tools do you need?

Your primary tool, apart from a computer with an internet connection, would be a blog. There are numerous blogging platforms out there to select from. Some are free to set up with, while others require a monthly or annual fee to get started with.

The paid versions of blogging platforms can assist you to link up with additional blogs and increase your blog's traffic. The free versions are extremely easy to create and most are extremely popular amongst bloggers, so coming up with people to connect with wouldn't be too hard to do.

How do you get started?

Register with a blogging platform and begin posting entries to it. Make certain you are blogging on a regular basis, which would be approximately two times a week. Blogs that aren't updated on a regular basis tend to get lost in cyberspace.

Promote your blog as much as possible. Get on other people's blog rolls, get listed on blog directories and comment on other blog author's posts to acquire some exposure to your blog. The more hits you are able to drive to your blog, the higher your chance of making blogging a lucrative means to earn money.

Most of the blogging platforms will have a sign up for adsense adverts already included in their set up feature, so getting started with that will be easy. If you would like to supply product critiques and contextual links, you will need to be blogging for awhile and have a reasonable amount of traffic coming to it.

When your blog is up and running, find out the companies that will help you connect with businesses that wish to pay to have their products reviewed or have their links embedded with your blog post entries. You will be able to start bringing in some extra money with your blog once this is ready.

Blogging is an easy way to earn some extra cash if you plan to work hard at marketing it. The ones successful at blogging for money use every route possible to get their blog well known in the internet communities. The ones that don't, tend to earn only a few cents a week.

Become one of the more successful bloggers and make your blog your business and not just a hobby to partake in from time to time. Your wallet will thank you for it. - 16069

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