Now that you have Wordpress installed and you have selected a nice theme for your site you will obviously have to start posting. Let’s get this straight. The only way that you can make money blogging is to generate traffic, building an audience that comes back to your blog by posting regularly, provide subscription options (more on this in a later post) and being personal. By personal I mean, be yourself.
Select Your Niche and Generate Traffic
If you have followed our suggestion and have started in a niche that you have a passionate about, all this will flow out naturally. The passion drives the knowledge and desire to communicate and your passion will come across in the way that you write. You will find your natural voice.
But how much should I post? This is a question that I get often, but there is no ONE answer, post as often as you feel you have something you would like to communicate. This also depends on your niche. One of my niches is about a particular horse race that is only on once a year, in November - The Melbourne Cup, so December to about August there is not a lot of activity for me but September - November things really start to pick up and I can be posting 3-4 times a day as news on horses, odds, form, jockeys, trainers etc come to hand. In short you should be posting a least, absolute minimum, once a week, any less then this, you really need to think about if you are going to have the longevity to ensure your success. Personally I post a least once a day, to one of blog site, minimum. But as mentioned it all depends on what is happening in that niche.
I always like to work through an example. So lets say you have just started a blog on your favourite niche Dogs, specifically Border Collies. What I would do right at the start is sit down and complete a full list (brainstorm) of all the possible articles and postings that you could possibly make about Border Collies. Example:
- Selecting your Border Collie Puppy
- Which Color is right for you? Does it matter?
- Pro’s and Con’s of a Border Collie (i.e you need to give them a lot of exercise)
- What you need in a Show Dog (write an article from a Show judging point of view)
- How to train your Border Collie for Agility Competitions
- How to train your Border Collie for Fly Ball racing
- Complete history of the Border Collie
- Famous Border Collies through history
There are plenty more that I am sure you could think of, especially if this was a topic of interest. Now you have a good start on the next 8 days, or at least 8 weeks of blog posts. You could also break these down into parts so that each topic has two posts etc which would spread out your blogging.
Just ensure you keep posting.
Also, be creative. Blogging is not just about doing some research and sitting down and writing post after post after post. Remember this is something that you are passionate about. So in our example, perhaps you go to Dog Shows, perhaps you show your own Border Collies. Take photos and video of the show, post them online, write a report. Perhaps there is a National Show or State Show that you could go to and complete a live update and post to your blog with photo’s. With services and sites like Twitter and Cover It Live you can be very creative and offer an immense amount of value to your readers.
So get those creative and blogging juices flowing. But remember blog posts +traffic = income. Keep doing the first one and the rest will come naturally.
Speaking of income, this post was, and is, about how to make money blogging. So Ian, where does the money come from? I’ve done the right thing and have posted regularly for about one month on Border Collies and have generated a nice amount of traffic about 1000 visitors a month, people are being interactive posting comments and asking questions, which has provided even more ideas for future posts. Things are going well. So where does the money come from?
Income Streams for Bloggers
Advertising Programs
The most obvious place to start is with Advertising Programs. The most common and easiest way for a blogger to earn money online is via contextual ad programs, with the market leader being Google’s Adsense which I am sure you are already aware of. There will be an article down the track on maximising revenue with Adsense so stay tuned. There are however a few new players in this space which many bloggers are using successfully Chitika’s eMiniMalls, Widgetbucks and Text Link Ads. We also have two other majors in Microsoft’s MSN Adcenter and Yahoo’s YPN
Then we can get into a whole host of smaller players Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick and Value Click.
My advice here is to select one or two that you are comfortable with that so that you can roll out across all your blog sites which will assist you in agreegating your revenue into one place. The worst thing to do would be to sign up for all these programs, you will simply lose track of it all and allow it to become an administrative nightmare. Personally I use Google Adsense and Text Link Ads.
Affiliate Programs
This is I think the best way to make money blogging. Why? Because the affiliate programs that you allow in are specific to your niche, you get to decide and the payouts are much higher then that of simple contextual ads. This is important, especially for small niches. If in our example we get no more then 2000 visitors a month, which is not that hard to obtain, we want to ensure that we maximise the revenue from those readers.
If we get 40 affiliate sales from these customers (2% of 2000) at $30 in commission we’d generate $1,200 for the month. Compare this to contextual links from Google. Lets say we are only getting $0.50 - $0.75 per click through, our click through rate might be higher then our 2% conversion, let’s say we have done well in the way to position our text ads and in our niche we are getting 5% click through, we’d only end up with $50 - $75 for the month. We are letting money slip through our fingers, as those customers while clicked on the Google ad on your site, probably went off and purchased another product.
Go back to our affiliate sales example, let’s say we’ve been doing this for about 1 year and now we have 5 specific niche blogs that we are running, blogging regularly and are simply a reflection of things you are interested in. Border Collies, Car Restoration, Fly Fishing, Mountain Bike riding and Baseball. Five very specific niches, if they are each doing 40 sales a month you could be generating $6,000 per month. This type of scenario is very achievable and now you can live the life you want.
There are large affiliate partners like Amazon, ClickBank, LinkShare and Commission Junction down to literally thousands of smaller partners. I’d stick with the major ones and personally I’d start with Clickbank as there are no entry requirements and no minimum sales quota’s and hundreds of options Then I’d start to look at Commission Junction and Linkshare where you can start earning commission on household brands like Macy’s, Footlocker etc.
Digital Assets
What does this mean? Well this is a fancy way to say, if you cannot find an affiliate product to sell or do not like what is on offer then create your own. There is an ever increasing number of bloggers that promote their own, ebook, audio or video program, course or tele-seminar. You can to. Perhaps you have very specific information that you have collected over the years and there is little assistance online, you may have just found the Goose to lay your Golden Eggs. Create your own product and start to sell it online, you get 100% of the money earned. Even better, if you have a great selling product you can use Affiliate programs in Clickbank to get other people to sell for you. Now you will start to leverage the work of other people and increase you income dramatically.
Lets go back to our example on Border Collies. You decide that you want to start to offer your own complete “Border Collie Training Manual” You create a 56 page ebook with everything from selecting your puppy, considerations, toilet training, grooming, fun activities to do etc. You also include 12 video tutorials on things like obedience, toilet training, the same things that were in your ebook but with video and finally a 30 minute tele-seminar recording of your interview with a Border Collie breeder.
Previously you were getting $30 per sale at 50% commission, now you sell your own program for $60 and get the same results, you have just doubled your income! But that is not all, you have learnt a lot over the last 12 months about Blogging and how to market online, and you include a once-only offer that has additional course material. Such as, How to Train your Border Collie for Fly Ball, How to Train Your Border Collie for Agility events and How to get started Breeding Border Collies etc. This upsell is an additional say $24 and you get 20% uptake on this back end offer. You just added another $192 in sales. You also have these individual modules available for sale on your site at $19 each and also get unique sales just on these items.
I hope that you are starting to get the picture on just how massive a simple niche like Border Collies could be all from a minimal reader base. This is specifically how people are making $10,000+ a month online, starting with their passions, learning the methods, being creative and building their future and the great news is that you can start today.
But we are not quite finished with our How To Make Money Blogging and Income streams just yet. Let’s now have a look at:
Blog Network Communities
As blogging has become more and more numerous so have the opportunities for bloggers to earn an income from their blogging activities simply by writing for and with others. There are many blogging networks out there, simply Google Blogging Networks, which will pay bloggers to contribute to other sites. Note this can also be a way that you can get content onto your site while you are away enjoying your overseas holiday. I’d view this simply as a last resort myself, I’d prefer to spend time writing on my own blogs, knowing that at the end of the day I am contributing to my own success, not assisting another blogger or network to get all the rewards. It is however another revenue stream and lets face it in today’s economy might be a great option to keep things ticking over.
Donations
Hey, it works. Simply having a donation box or tip jar on your site can allow people to donate money to ensure that the content they have come to love continues to get produced. This is particularly so if you have managed to build a connection with your readers, they are personally and emotionally attached and want to ensure that you continue to do well. This of course would absolutely depend on the site you have. I could not in good conscience have an affiliate program where I knew I was making $1,000 a month in sales AND a donation option.
I would perhaps use the donation option if you were blogging about the plight of youth homeless, reporting on displaced children in war zones. Something were a percentage of funds donated went to XYZ charity. You could also just have a general all encompassing blog and build a great readership in the tens of thousands, and simply ask for support to continue their enjoyment. One of the best known bloggers who used donations to get full time 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.
Blog Flipping
Essentially the process of selling blogs. There are resources like Site Point Market place that allow people to sell blogs and other sites. Many of these sites are in the early stages of their life. Some people can make good money taking a site that is essentially a shell, adding the right ingredients to it, traffic, getter SEO etc, some affiliate programs and then re-sell it down the track for 10-100x the initial purchase price. Think of real estate flipping, buy a property, fix the bathroom and add some landscape gardens and re-sell.
I would not recommend for a first time or novice Blogger, best to learn and ensure you know how to do these things yourself before taking on such projects. It can however be a lot of fun. You can also find a lot of ideas for your own blogs and potential niches by simply searching through the various listings, sometimes I jump on there and get a “I never thought of selling that before” type of moment.
So there you have it, lots of great material to get you started to turn you blog into a money making machine. This of course is just the start, I am sure as things develop and time goes on we’ll see new and unique ways for bloggers to make money from their passions. Things like Twitter are just starting to take off and I am sure we have not seen or heard the end of this new phenomenon. But that is no excuse not to start today.
Looking to make your own profitable blogging Niche?
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