24 March 2008 145 views 4 Comments Print This Post  Email This Post

It’s no secret that you can make real money online by blogging. Some of the top 100 money making blogs are pulling thousands of dollars each month. John Chow is a popular blogger who writes on the topic of making money online. He documents his blogging income and the last monthly total was somewhere in the $30,000 area. Honestly, I’ve lost track. Needless to say, there is huge potential in blogging with not much startup costs, but it’s not as easy as it seems. For established internet sensations like John, its easier to channel your existing web traffic to your blog, but most beginning bloggers give up within a few months when they realize they are writing to an audience of ten people. Those who put in the hard work can truly expect a decent alternative income stream.

Before I get into this crash course of starting an income producing blog, there are some things you need to know. Most importantly, you need to be passionate about the topic you are writing about. You don’t have to have great business sense or even be a good writer as long as you have passion. A blog is not a tool for passive income. You have to consistently work, often times many hours a day. The general rule is that if you’re willing to do it for free, you’re truly passionate. For example, Money Socket is almost a year old and I have yet to fully monetize the site. My plan is to focus on quality , multi-perspective content and marketing first even though I have to pay Thursday for her insightful articles. If you’ve got a topic that you’re passionate enough to write about for free and will even pay other bloggers for extra posts, keep on reading to learn how to set up your money making blog.

Platform and Backend

What is likely the most popular platform for an income producing blog these days is Wordpress. It’s an amazing program that’s free and easy to use. Most hosting companies can install this software on your website for free. My host, 1 and 1 sells affordable hosting and you can install wordpress with one click. You’ll be set up in a matter of days. To get an idea of how to customize and set up the software, buy a copy of Wordpress for dummies. Play around with the backend and you’ll get used to it in no time.

Design and feel

Customizing the look and feel of your blog isn’t that hard once you get the hang of it. Themes can be found at the Wordpress theme viewer. This is where you can browse free themes that people have created and upload them onto your site. Wordpress for dummies will cover the how to of uploading and customizing a theme.

Monetization

Basically, you make money from your blog through the traffic it receives. Money is generated from private ad sales, affiliate programs, pay-per-click advertising, paid reviews, paid posts, donations, sponsorships, and other creative methods. Like any content-driven website, you’re hoping that your blog posts will bring enough site traffic to pull some decent revenue. It’s a pure numbers game. I highly recommend John’s site to learn more about monetization. Sign up to get his free ebook.

Promotion

Like other websites, a blog won’t make any money if no one sees it, therefore promotion is a priority for any blogger. In the beginning the easiest way to get some traffic is through other established blogs. Comment on your favorite blogs, introduce yourself to the author(s) and eventually kindly ask to be on their blogroll. You can also participate in blog carnivals where you submit an article along with others on a certain topic. Ask popular bloggers if they will accept guest posts as that will generate some decent traffic for your own site through a link-back. In addition to those methods, all other forms of web promotion still applies. You can try pay-per-click advertising, buying spots on other blogs, and even offline promotion. For tips on promotion, I recommend reading net business blog and daily blog tips.

If you think blogging is for you, get to work!