The blogging trend has only just begun, millions of bloggers express them self daily using this medium. However, not many people know how to properly setup a blog in order to make money from it.
Blogging can generate a good stream of income but as any online business the money doesn't come all by itself. You have to put in some effort and slowly work yourself up the traffic ladder and sometimes you need a bit of luck to find those high performing search terms. It's often wise to have patience and work for a long term strategy that in the long run will reward you over and over again.
For people that haven't a clue about blogs and blogging, a free blogging service like blogger.com is advised to start up with and learn the ropes. However, if you are serious about blogging, you should look at registering your own domain and get a hosting account for your blog as soon as possible.
I will now reveal my top 5 secret steps to build a money making blog. They are research, setup, optimization, monetization and traffic driving:
1. Researching your Niche - First you need to find a Niche to blog about. A good tip is to check out popular magazines in Amazon, popular products in Ebay and most viewed/published articles in Ezinearticles. Don't go to general but pick a subniche that has at least 10-500 searches a day in Wordtracker and under 10.000 competing pages in google. While doing Niche research also check Clickbank and Commision Junction for good niche specific products to promote as an affiliate.
3. Setting up your Blog - A keyword rich domain name does wonders with Google so choose wisely. For the niche golf swings you could choose a domain name like improvemygolfswings.com. The recommended blogging platform to install is Wordpress. Optimize the blog with at least the following plugins: All-in-One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Akismet, Feedburner, Google Analytics and Auto Social.
3. Finding Blog content - Pick out 2-3 main keyword phrases from the research phase to start optimizing your blog for. Search these phrases for content in Ezinearticles, technorati, PRwebs, forums, magazines and books. It's also a good idea to setup Google Alerts in order to receive daily keyword specific articles. Strive to make daily quality posts by rewriting the content in your own style or just adding your comments under the article. Don't just copy other peoples work. Make sure you include keyword phrases in the post title, body and header tags, but don't overdo it. It's more important that it's readable to the user.
4. Monitize your blog with products from Clickbank and Commission Junction. Sprinkle affiliate links in posts and banners in the sidebar. Use common sense and don?t make it look like a big advertisement blog. 1-2 Products to start with are enough but you could also do a review page with 3 top products in the niche.
5. Traffic Generation - Start submitting articles to Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, Isnare.com and other article directories. If you want more exposure, consider using an article submission service. Submit your RSS feed to RSS services such as Feedsubmitter.com, Feedagg.com, Feedage.com and Feedfury.com. Make a bookmark of each post in social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us and Propeller. Socialmarker is a resource that automatically posts to all these sites with a click on the mouse. For more backlinks comment on other people's blogs and create article pages on free webservices like Squidoo, Hubpages, Weebly and Blogger.
If you are persistent and keep doing the traffic generation tactics mentioned above you will soon see a boost in visitors and hopefully a good amount of revenue stream. Always strive for good quality content that enriches the users experience and update your blog regularly.
However, even if you followed the instructions and daily worked hard on the traffic tactics, your blog might for some reason not get much response. If you know about the 80/20 rule, the same principles can be applied here. 20% of your blogs will make 80% of you income. So for a blog that isn't performing well after a month or two of consistent traffic optimization put some Adsense on it and fire up another blog with the same process. Do not delete the old blog since sometimes a blog can suddenly bloom up and attract people. Make some random posts to it now and then. By having a couple of posts, you are spreading your chance of hitting a really good performing blog.
The highly successful million dollar blogger Rob Benwell teaches a lot of secret strategies in his latest e-book, Blogging to the Bank 3.0. This guide is gold worth for someone just starting up but also includes a lot of tricks for the more experienced bloggers. Another tip is Firepow, a top notch tool which helps you automate the setup of a blog with the right plugins, getting content, optimize posts and promote all your blogs within a single easy to use web interface.
Blogging can generate a good stream of income but as any online business the money doesn't come all by itself. You have to put in some effort and slowly work yourself up the traffic ladder and sometimes you need a bit of luck to find those high performing search terms. It's often wise to have patience and work for a long term strategy that in the long run will reward you over and over again.
For people that haven't a clue about blogs and blogging, a free blogging service like blogger.com is advised to start up with and learn the ropes. However, if you are serious about blogging, you should look at registering your own domain and get a hosting account for your blog as soon as possible.
I will now reveal my top 5 secret steps to build a money making blog. They are research, setup, optimization, monetization and traffic driving:
1. Researching your Niche - First you need to find a Niche to blog about. A good tip is to check out popular magazines in Amazon, popular products in Ebay and most viewed/published articles in Ezinearticles. Don't go to general but pick a subniche that has at least 10-500 searches a day in Wordtracker and under 10.000 competing pages in google. While doing Niche research also check Clickbank and Commision Junction for good niche specific products to promote as an affiliate.
3. Setting up your Blog - A keyword rich domain name does wonders with Google so choose wisely. For the niche golf swings you could choose a domain name like improvemygolfswings.com. The recommended blogging platform to install is Wordpress. Optimize the blog with at least the following plugins: All-in-One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Akismet, Feedburner, Google Analytics and Auto Social.
3. Finding Blog content - Pick out 2-3 main keyword phrases from the research phase to start optimizing your blog for. Search these phrases for content in Ezinearticles, technorati, PRwebs, forums, magazines and books. It's also a good idea to setup Google Alerts in order to receive daily keyword specific articles. Strive to make daily quality posts by rewriting the content in your own style or just adding your comments under the article. Don't just copy other peoples work. Make sure you include keyword phrases in the post title, body and header tags, but don't overdo it. It's more important that it's readable to the user.
4. Monitize your blog with products from Clickbank and Commission Junction. Sprinkle affiliate links in posts and banners in the sidebar. Use common sense and don?t make it look like a big advertisement blog. 1-2 Products to start with are enough but you could also do a review page with 3 top products in the niche.
5. Traffic Generation - Start submitting articles to Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, Isnare.com and other article directories. If you want more exposure, consider using an article submission service. Submit your RSS feed to RSS services such as Feedsubmitter.com, Feedagg.com, Feedage.com and Feedfury.com. Make a bookmark of each post in social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us and Propeller. Socialmarker is a resource that automatically posts to all these sites with a click on the mouse. For more backlinks comment on other people's blogs and create article pages on free webservices like Squidoo, Hubpages, Weebly and Blogger.
If you are persistent and keep doing the traffic generation tactics mentioned above you will soon see a boost in visitors and hopefully a good amount of revenue stream. Always strive for good quality content that enriches the users experience and update your blog regularly.
However, even if you followed the instructions and daily worked hard on the traffic tactics, your blog might for some reason not get much response. If you know about the 80/20 rule, the same principles can be applied here. 20% of your blogs will make 80% of you income. So for a blog that isn't performing well after a month or two of consistent traffic optimization put some Adsense on it and fire up another blog with the same process. Do not delete the old blog since sometimes a blog can suddenly bloom up and attract people. Make some random posts to it now and then. By having a couple of posts, you are spreading your chance of hitting a really good performing blog.
The highly successful million dollar blogger Rob Benwell teaches a lot of secret strategies in his latest e-book, Blogging to the Bank 3.0. This guide is gold worth for someone just starting up but also includes a lot of tricks for the more experienced bloggers. Another tip is Firepow, a top notch tool which helps you automate the setup of a blog with the right plugins, getting content, optimize posts and promote all your blogs within a single easy to use web interface.
About the Author:
Patrik G Moore is an eager blogger and owner of a dozens of blogs and websites. In blogpostingsoftwares.com he recommends people to devour Blogging to the Bank 3 and also his Firepow Review.
