Learning how to make money blogging was all the rage in 2007-2009,
but with the explosion of the blogosphere that followed, the potential
for quick cash faded. It is STILL very possible to make a good living
blogging, but it requires some basic know-how and planning. Lucky for
you, we've got instructions!
One of the great things about
learning how to make money blogging is that if you master this skill,
you can literally work anywhere in the world that you have internet
access!
How to Make Money Blogging 101 - building traffic
Starting a blog is pretty easy - you go to wordpress.com or blogger.com,
sign up and POOF! you've got a web presence. Start typing away and
you've got yourself a blog. However, learning how to make money blogging
isn't downloaded into your brain as part of the registration process.
So, here's the crash course:
Recipe for How To Make Money Blogging:
Research what things people are looking for... Write well-worded accessible content with good basic SEO skills that gives them what they're looking for... Grow traffic through participation in social media and the blogging community When you've got significant traffic and content, add monetization methods Wash and repeat.
Now,
this formula is the basic formula for making money from any website.
Just because your website is using a blogging platform doesn't mean
that the model doesn't still work or isn't still important.
Planning your Blog
Most people jump into blogging without
doing any research as to what folks are looking for. If they develop
traffic over time, it's usually because they're writing in a true niche
and accidentally following this pattern. If you want to know how to
make money blogging, you've got to start with good planning.
Before
you get started, go out and find some keyword researching tools
(Adwords makes a great one you can access here) and explore the demand
for different keywords in your niche. Get together a whole list of
potential keywords that have demand which you could write about on your
blog. For example, does the singular or the plural version of your main
keyword get the most traffic? If it's the plural and you only blog
about the singular, you'll be loosing lots of potential traffic.
Next,
do a quick search on Google of the keyword. See what kind of
competition you'll be going up against. Too stiff? drop that keyword
from your list. Easy win? push it to the top.
Wondering how to
determine the level of competition? I use a couple of criteria. Who's
on the first page? What are their PageRanks (use a tool like SEO Site
Tools for Chrome or SEO Quake for Firefox)? Are there any non-related
'random' pages on that initial search? If so, you've got a better
chance than if not.
Learning how to make money blogging is
all about creating good written content that people are looking to
read. It's not about finding and putting up the ideal wordpress template or ideal blog marketing, it's about creating content that lasts.
SEO,
or search engine optimization, is the art and skills attached to
creating websites and content that rank well (on the first page) in the
major search engines (Google, basically). If you really want to learn
how to make money blogging, you need to go out and become a student of
SEO because the practices that are standard one quarter might be just
what gets you banned from Google the next time around.
There
are, however, some basic things to know about when writing your blog
posts that will help you get off on the right foot. Here's my basic SEO
checklist for a blog post I write:
Is the keyword in the blog title towards the beginning?
Is the keyword in the permalink?
Is the keyword in the first 100 characters of the blog post?
Does
the keyword appear throughout the rest of the post at natural intervals
(not stuffed in there to the point of being annoying)?
Does the keyword appear in a link in the post?
If I have an image in the post, does the keyword appear in the image title and file name?
The real trick, and in
fact the real work, of learning how to make money blogging is learning
how to create a community of blog readers who will trust you and buy
the products you recommend as well as creating interest and buzz that
will drive new, unique, visitors to your blog who will click your ads.
Creating
a community requires you to interact with that community. Beyond simply
moderating comments, you should send a personal email reply to everyone
who takes the time to comment. You need to post regularly, if possible
daily when you start, so folks will get in the habit of checking your
blog each and every day. You need to be on Facebook and Twitter and
drive traffic to your blog each and every day with 3-4 unique posts,
one of which links to your latest blog article.
Participating
in the community outside your blog is important as well - create a
MyBlogLog profile and follow other bloggers with the same interest by
reading and commenting on their blogs. Follow other twitters and
retweet their interesting tweets. Comment on your Facebook Friend's
posts to their walls. Participate in weekly memes by doing them on your
blog/twitter and reading what other people post.
A good rule
that I use when building a blog is to dedicate as much time to
promoting my blog each day as I do writing that day's article. I write
really fast, a 750 word article takes me about 1/2 an hour to an hour
to write so I figure I spend another 30 minutes promoting that article
in social media and 30 more minutes reading my RSS feed and commenting
on other writer's posts.
The upside of all this is that you make
friends and get to know new people around the world! It's one of the
reasons many people start blogging in the first place.
Monetizing your Blog
The
easiest way to learn how to make money blogging is to get a small gig
blogging for someone else who has an established blog. Even if it pays
horribly, think of it like a blogging internship. You'll learn how to
manage a successful community, how to work with affiliate programs and
links, how to promote products and how to experiment with adsense
placement.
The reason I recommend this is that, while you're
building your own blog's traffic you can learn on the traffic that
someone else has already spent the time growing. So long as you're not
a horrible or unreliable writer, you'll have a great chance to learn
both ends of the skill set at the same time.
Once your blog has
some traffic, start to monetize by adding Adsense ads. They won't
make most people rich, but it's possible that you could make enough to
keep you in coffee if you've got strong traffic. Some people get really
good at this and never do much else in the way of monetization,
preferring to spend more time writing. However, it'll always suit you
well to have multiple monetization models.
You can then begin to
promote products that relate to your niche and that you believe in.
This can be done on a pay-to-post format, where you're paid a certain
amount for the post you write about a product, or an affiliate link
format. Affiliate links have the most potential for long-term income,
but they can take time to flesh out and require you to have good skills
at pre-selling your readers. If you're new, you might want to start
with a couple pay-to-post articles and then move on from there.
The
last big hurdle for most people learning how to make money blogging is
learning how to manage advertisements. It's actually simpler than it
might seem, but you need to get some statistics in place first. Make
sure you have an accurate Feed Subscriber count, a good Alexa ranking
and some solid traffic data. Once you've got that in place, you can
create a page for companies interested in buying an advertisement spot.
Charging by the month is standard (start cheap, like $5 for a
100x100 pixel ad if you've got ~100 daily visitors and go up from
there) and Paypal makes it easy to set up recurring billing. I always
encourage folks to require a multiple month commitment (3 months or 6
months paid in advance isn't asking too much). When it's time for your
contracts to renew, make sure you consider increasing your fee if your
traffic has increased as well.
Simple enough, right?
The
"how" of how to make money blogging is, yes, very simple. The actual
making it happen can be a long road though. If you've got skills at
writing, tenacity and a solid plan the market is still wide open. Just
don't expect to create a spam blog and be raking in the dough next
week.