First of all, I’m going to assume that your reason for reading this article is for tips on how to make money from your blog. I’m not saying you should or will, but that the following is a great start/way to turn your blog into something that will one day bring in some income. If you are serious about making money online and want to turn your blog from a hobby into a little side business or more, then do it.
Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.
Before I get started however I must confess that most people will not make any money from their blogs. Big statement, I know. But it’s better, to be honest, and open with you.
So why do people fail? Well, often it’s simply because their content isn’t worth reading! There is no way that a site with poorly designed content will make money long term. Then following content other reasons also flow, and are inter-related, such as poor traffic numbers, poorly designed pages that don’t allow for ads to be displayed properly, not appearing in search engine results, and people simply often give up too soon. Just because you registered a domain name and posted some articles on it doesn’t mean that you will start making money straight away. I worked on Make Money Online Guaranteed for over 12 months before I saw any return on my effort. The trick is to keep at it. If you want it to succeed then you will need to put in some hard work.
Everyone thinks that the internet will make them rich. There are many people of course that have been able to capitalize on what the net offers however without really putting in some hard work, none of them were given their results on a silver platter.
So let’s get started.
When I first started Make Money Online Guaranteed I decided that I would make this site monetized. What do I mean by this? Well, I decided I was going to display ads from the start. I’m up-front and honest about how I make money from my site. I could have built my readership up and added paid ads later on but I didn’t want to cause any problems there as some readers don’t like seeing ads. The fact is, if I wanted the site to continue I needed to display ads otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to fund its long-term development.
You can buy attention (advertising). You can beg for attention from the media (PR). You can bug people one at a time to get attention (sales). Or you can earn attention by creating something interesting and valuable and then publishing it online for free.
Is it possible to make a healthy income online?
It certainly is possible to make a decent income. this could be 4 or 5 figures annually for someone who is working full time from home. It would be less if you are working part-time or probably take much longer to achieve a higher level of income. Often people will start part-time on their blog and when they see the potential for income and the dollars starting to roll in they make the switch over to full-time to build their blog/website up even more.
Can most people achieve making money from their blogs?
Well, as discussed above, most people will not be able to make money from their blogs. If you are serious about doing it the right way, building your site up then you are more than likely to fail, but so many people can’t. Maybe it’s a question of how much time you going to invest, what your background is with regards to business and your area of expertise as well as really….if you’re a smart person. If you are smart then you won’t make the big bad mistakes that 99% of everyone else trying to make money online from their blog makes.
This is relevant to other areas of life though as well. Think about business. Smart people usually succeed. Now that may be harsh and fill my inbox with complaints but it’s not hard to see the truth. Think about another industry…such as music. How many people can pick up a guitar, learn some chords, and sing some songs and think they want to make truckloads of money from their band. But in reality, they are just the same as every other college band. The ones that succeed either had a lucky break or were different from the rest. Maybe not smarter in the sense of the word most people think of, such as brain smarts, but certainly savvier. Perhaps they got their demo in front of the right people and used tools such as YouTube or Myspace to boost their exposure to the world.
Do I need to be a computer nerd?
Certainly not! But if you have some web-savvy ways of thinking then you will certainly have a strong advantage over most of your competitors. I for instance completed a computer science degree so that gave me some exposure to web techniques, programming languages, etc. But for most people, it might be a case of learning the skills you need to be successful with your blog….Otherwise, you will need to invest some money to pay a programmer to get it set up for you.
These are some of the areas that you should have an understanding of so that you can boost your potential for a decent income from your blog:
* WordPress (or other software that will allow you to create your blog)
* HTML/CSS
* How to deal with blog comments (and also spam)
* RSS/syndication
* Blog feeds
* linking to other blogs and receiving links back to yours
* search engines
* search engine optimization (or SEO)
* page ranking
* social networking / bookmarking (ie: Facebook, Myspace)
* advertising options such as Google Adsense
* How to monitor your traffic on your site and interpret the results
* Email (this one is a given)
While there are many more that could be covered such as using podcasts, videocasts, webforms, and subscription email programs if just looking at the above list seems alien to you, then perhaps making money online isn’t what you cut out to do. And that is fine because it is much better to realize that now than later on after you have invested money or time into getting something started that simply won’t work out.
It’s also about balancing the various aspects of monetizing your blog so that you provide attention to each area and not overload your concern with one area. An example of this would be advertising and placing too many ads on all of your pages. This would have a negative impact on generating income from your site as your visitors would simply move on to the next website where they are not bombarded with ads. At the same time, if you can’t read your traffic stats then you might not realize that your visitors are quickly leaving your site for instance.
Are you an Entrepreneur?
These types of people are the ones who really will succeed in making money from their blog as they can think outside the square and adapt quickly to change and opportunity. If you aren’t savvy with thinking of new ways to beat your competition, develop your product, or way of marketing then you will get left behind. There are always new ways to make money from business opportunities and such, so keep an eye out for them.
If you don’t know what opportunities there are to be had with the latest technologies, blogging techniques or ways to make money from the internet then stay up to date by reading various sites on the topic to get a full and up-to-date understanding. This is an area that is constantly changing. People want to change quickly, Google changes all the time, so one day you might be on page 1 and the next page 5. If you aren’t working on your site from a holistic point of view then it will be difficult to survive the test of time and change.
The beauty is also in learning new ways of doing things to improve your site, maybe help your readers come back more often, techniques to provide more value to your readers as well as increasing your profits. Stay on top of what’s new and you will do well.
Produce an income strategy. Define what you want to achieve so you have something to measure against. How else will you know if you’re actually succeeding and hitting the goals you want for your site and ultimately making money to support yourself?
More to come, stay tuned.