BLOGGING FOR TRAFFIC: ONLINE MONEY MACHINE

Things You’ll Need:

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a blog

2. Access to a computer

Step1

Get a blog. The first thing you need to do is to get a blog. A blog is actually a website where a person maintains regular entries about their life, like an online diary, or other interests such as entertainment or music. There are a lot of blog services out there, most of which are free. Some are more user friendly and compatible with other services so you’ll want to look at the different blog services to see what each one has to offer. Some of the more popular ones that are compatible with multiple services are WordPress and eBlogger.

Step2

Start posting, by writing your comments in your blog. An example might be a personal story or a review of a movie you've seen lately. It doesn't have to be a formal story such as you would find in a magazine but can be much more casual in style, even in a conversational tone. Most paid blogging services will only let an established blog into their company, which means that you have to have written in it before they will accept it. You will want to start blogging well in advance of applying to be a paid blogger. Some companies want a blog at least 90 days old and with at least 20 posts prior to applying. This way, they are accepting only established accounts instead of people just wanting to get paid to blog. They want blogs that have established content.

Step3

Find companies that pay you to blog. There are numerous companies that offer payment to blog for advertisers. Two of the very popular ones are Social Spark and Pay Per Post. Both allow you to search for advertisers that are offering payment. You will also be able to see which ones you are qualified for. Some advertisers want your blog to be a certain Google page rank but for the most part, you can earn money no matter what your page rank. Payments can range from as little as a few cents to hundreds of dollars but the norm is between $5.00 and $15.00 per blog. Blogs that have a higher page rank or viewership will get paid more since the advertiser will know that their ad has reached more people.

Step4

A company might expect you to blog about their specials they have on their website or a new product that is available. Some companies will even send you a product to test out and then blog about. Most recently, Triscents by Glade was offering free products in order for one to sample then blog about as a form of advertising. Most companies will just ask you to provide between 50-200 words about their service or product. Always read the rules about posting the ad first so your post is not rejected the first time.

Step5

Continue to blog about your own life and make a list to have handy. Advertisers don’t want blogs that are just advertising space so you’ll want to sandwich your paid posts in between two posts that are your own words about anything you want to blog about. In fact, most paid blogging services require this. The best rule of thumb is to just go ahead and think of things you want to write about and have that handy so that when you do have an open opportunity to get paid to blog, you have other posts that you can use.

Step6

Enjoy what you’re doing. If you think of paid blogging as a job, that’s fine but you want to make it fun as well. Blogging should be something you enjoy and getting paid should just be the icing on the cake. Find things that you want to share with the world. Make your blog unique so that more readers will find it and want to subscribe.

How to Be a Paid Blogging

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Looking for ways to make some extra income on the side? A blog is an online diary of sorts and becoming a paid blogger can be rewarding and give you some extra cash as well. You can also get the satisfaction of having your own blog and letting the world know what you have to say. However, it’s not easy to get started in the business of paid blogging unless you know a few things that will help you out.

MAKE $500 MONTHLY WITH GOOGLE IN YOUR BLOGSPOT.

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ABOUT GOOGLE ADSENCE
Google Adsense is an advertising program of Google where publishers display random Google advertisements on their websites and earn when some one clicks on any of the advertisements from their website.
The amount of money that you will earn from each advertisement click through will depend on the amount of money that the advertiser has set to his or her advertisement.
There are some techniques that you as a webmaster can use so as to increase the number of clicks through and earn more money.
So let me just share with you 3 techniques to use when you wish to display some Google Adsense advertisements on your website:
1) Place your Google Adsense advertisements on the top of your page. When people visit your website, they will put their attention on the information that is displayed at the top of the page. Therefore, you will want people to see your Google Adsense advertisements so that there will be possibilities of a click through.
2) Blend your Google Adsense advertisements with your website. Use the same font and font color that suits your website theme. You can set the font and font color from your Google Adsense account. If you blend your Google Adsense advertisement well, your website will look very professional.
3) Generate lots of traffic to your website. With little traffic, there will not be many people viewing your Google Adsense advertisement, which will result in low click through rate.
4) According to surveys and research, Google Adsense advertisements without borders will generate more clicks through when compared with advertisements with borders. But if you think that advertisements with border suit better with your website design, then please set the borders.
Take some time and try out the above 4 techniques that are listed above. You will need some time to trial and error so as to find out the best strategies for your website and Google Adsense combination.
Once you have find out your best strategies, success with Google Adsense will not be a myth anymore.
The author is the co-founder of HomeBizGears.com
HomeBizGears.com strives to provide the resources and gears for you to start YOUR Internet Business.
HomeBizGears.com is also the publisher of the e-book “Your Perfect Guide to Start Internet Business”.

HOW BLOGGERS MAKE MONEY

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How Bloggers Make Money from Blogs

MY Personal Income Streams
As an update to this post I’ve more recently written one on HowI make Money Blogging which highlights the most profitable ways that I use blogs to generate income.
How do bloggers make money from blogs?
I’ve been reflecting this week about the amazing diversity of opportunities that are opening up for bloggers to make money from blogging.
I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.
The wonderful thing is that this is becoming easier and easier to do 2005 has seen many options opening up. I thought I’d take a look at some of the methods that bloggers are currently using to make money through blogs.
Income Streams for Bloggers - How to Make Money Blogging
Advertising Programs - Perhaps the most obvious changes in the past few months have been with the addition of a variety of viable advertising options for bloggers looking to make money from their blogs. The most common way bloggers seem to earn money online is via the contextual ad program from Google - Adsense. A more recent addition that many are using successfully are Chitika’s eMiniMalls and WidgetBucks, Text Link Ads.
Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click (to name just some of the options) and there is a smorgasbord of options. Of course there is more to come with MSN Adcenter and YPN both in beta testing and with a variety of other advertising system currently in development (YPN is only available to US publishers).
Lastly there’s BlogAds - one of the first blog specific ad networks.
RSS Advertising - The past 12 months have seen some advances in RSS Advertising also. I’m yet to hear of any bloggers making big money blogging through it to this point - but as improvements are made to the ad programs exploring this I’m sure we’ll start to see examples of it being profitable.
Sponsorship - In addition to the array of advertising programs that are available to join there is a growing awareness in the business of the value and opportunity that exists for them to advertise directly on blogs. I’m hearing more and more examples of this and have been fortunately to have a couple of ad campaigns of my own in the past month - one with Adobe a couple of weeks ago and another just completed with Ricoh for a new digicam over at my Digital Camera Blog. These are not isolated cases - as I say I know of many blogs exploring sponsorship with advertisers at present and suspect we’ll see more of it in the year ahead. Sponsorship is also happening on a post by post basis with some bloggers being paid to write on certain topics by companies - either in one off or a regular fashion - and they are able to make big money from their blogs doing so.
Affiliate Programs - There are larger affiliate programs like Amazon, Linkshare, Clickbank and Commission Junction but also literally thousands of others from the large to the very small.
Digital Assets - Increasing numbers of bloggers have been developing other digital assets to support and add revenue streams to their blogs. By this I mean that I’m increasingly seeing e-books, courses and tele-seminars being run by bloggers. My recent foray into this with the first series of the six figure blogging course that Andy and I ran a few weeks ago and have just released the study version of. This type of activity will only increase in future - in fact this week I’ve seen numerous examples of bloggers running courses.
Blog Network Opportunities - with the rise in popularity of Blog Networks - bloggers are also being presented with more places to earn an income from their blogging - by writing for and with others. While it might be difficult to get a writing gig with one of the bigger networks - there are plenty who are always asking for new bloggers to join and who are willing to pay bloggers using a variety of payment models. While there are distinct advantages of blogging for yourself - blogging for an established network who will handle a lot of the set up/promotion/admin/SEO etc has it’s advantages also. More and more bloggers are combining writing for themselves on their own blogs with taking on blog network blogs as additional income streams.
Business Blog Writing Opportunities - as blogging has risen in it’s profile as a medium more and more businesses are starting blogs. Many of these companies have internal staff take on blogging duties - but an increasing number of them are hiring specialist bloggers to come on and run their blogs. I know of a number of bloggers who in the past month or two have been approached for such paid work. Check out Bloggers for Hire if you’re looking for this type of work.
Non Blogging Writing Opportunities - Also becoming more common are bloggers being hired to write in non blogging mediums. Manolo’s recent coup of a column in the Washington Post is just one example of this as bloggers are increasingly being approached to write for newspapers, magazines and other non blog websites. Along side this is the rise of bloggers as published book authors - this is to the extent that one blogger I spoke with this week complained to me that they were one of the few bloggers than they knew who didn’t have a book deal!
Donations - Tip Jars and donation buttons have been a part of blogging for years now but this last year saw a number of bloggers go full time after fund raising drives. Perhaps the most high profile of these was Jason Kottke of kottke.org who through the generosity of his readership was able to quit his job and become a full time blogger.
Flipping Blogs - Also more common in 2005 was the practice of ‘Blog Flipping’ - or selling of blogs. This has happened both on an individual blog level (I can think of about 20 blogs that sold this year) but also on a network level (the most obvious of these being the 8 figure sale of Weblogs Inc to AOL).
Merchandising - My recent attempt to sell ProBlogger.net T-shirts wasn’t a raging success, but it is an example of how an increasing number of bloggers are attempting to make a few extra dollars from their blogs by selling branded products through programs like Cafepress. While I didn’t have a lot of success with merchandising - quite a few larger blogs are seeing significant sales - especially blogs with a cult following. I’m not at liberty to discuss details - but I know of one largish blog which will see sales over $20,000 in merchandise for the calendar year of 2005.
Consulting and Speaking - While it has been popular for established consultants to add blogs to their businesses we’re also starting to see bloggers with no consulting background able to make money by charging readers for their time in consulting scenarios BECAUSE of the profile that their blogs have built them. Blogging has the ability to establish people as experts on niche topics and we all know the value of being perceived as an expert. I spoke to one blogger last month who charges himself out at over $200 an hour for speaking and consulting work - his area of expertise was something that he knew little about 18 months ago - but through his blog he’s become a leader in his field and a minor celebrity in his industry.
As time rolls on there are more and more ways that bloggers make money from their blogs opening up. Feel free to suggest your own ideas and experiences in comments below.
Update: Looking for more information on how to make money blogging? Here’s a post I wrote talking about my own experience - particularly looking at the top ways that I make money from blogs.