Is Blogging a Legitimate Way to Make Money Online

Having or visiting an online blog has become intertwined into the fabric of our culture. People blog about their likes, dislikes, lives, work and virtually any other topic that is of interest to them. And as many people that blog, there are even more who enjoy reading them. As with most items of interest to a large group of people there are those who find a way, or at least would like to find a way, to make money on this phenomenon. Perhaps you are one of these potential entrepreneurs. So the question becomes, how can we monetize a blog into a revenue generating machine. Why a Blog Blogs are a good choice for those getting started into internet marketing. They are easy, relative to a standard website, to set up. They rank better on search engines due to the fact that they are typically updated regularly, both via new posts and new comments. This page ranking boost is critical to monetization as we will discuss in a moment. Another big plus with blogs is that they are very cost effective to run, with some sites like Blogger and Wordpress.com even hosting them for free. To make money with any blog you have to have two major components, content and visitors. You need content to attract your visitors and keep them coming back to your site and you need visitors to generate the income you are so keen on generating. Traffic Jam There are an almost endless variety of ways to generate traffic to your blog, too many to go into great length here. But to hit just a few you can start with; Article writing…You can and should write articles for you own blog. This will build quality content that will keep your visitors engaged and coming back for more. But you can also submit your well written articles to a variety of Article Submission sites across the internet. As these articles go out across the web they will contain links (if you’ve written them correctly) that point back to your site which will contribute to your immediate traffic and your search engine page ranking. Traffic Exchanges…There are quite a variety among the different traffic exchange sites but most operate under the same premise. You exchange “click” or pageviews with other website owners who are looking for the same think. Again you get visitors and the spread of your page url is again going to help you with your ranking. Social Bookmarking…Several internet sites, like Stumbleupon, are dedicated to gathering “recommendations” that their members are making in regards to sites, articles or blogs they have seen. They bookmark these pages and then share them with the other members. This is a powerful way to build an exponentially growing following among the web community. Additionally there are websites such as Socialadr that allow you to exchange (along the same principles as the traffic exchanges) bookmarks with other members to get you site out there much faster. Show Me the Money Okay, let’s suppose you are doing a good job and starting to generate visitors to your blog. Now what are you going to do with them to get some dollars rolling. Well again there are several ways. Adsense…Open an account with google adsense and they will place content relative ads on your blog or website. When visitors are reading your posts and see a related ad they may well click the link for more info. When they do Google get a commission from the advertiser who paid for the ad and then Google shares a portion of that commission with you. It doesn’t matter if they visitor buys anything or not, they just have to click on the ad. The commissions aren’t much but they can add up over time. Affiliate Marketing…Oh boy, that’s a huge topic. Suffice to say there are a load of advertisers out there who would gladly pay you a healthy commission, sometimes up to 75%, for any customers you may refer to them from your site. Go to an affiliate networking site like Clickbank and you can team up with a huge variety of vendors who will supply you with text based and banner ads you can put on your blog. When one of your visitors clicks thru and makes a purchase, you get your commission. List Building...You can use your blog to build a nice email list. Offer something of value to your visitors like an eBook or newsletter. Make it free so that all they have to do to get it is opt-in to your list to receive it. Now you have permission to send emails to them without being accused of spamming. You can gradually build a rapport with these people and market your affiliate products to them in your emails, again receiving a commission when they click through and order the product. In summary blogging can and for many is an enjoyable pass time. But if you would like it to be something more, follow these steps to turn a pastime into a goldmine.