This is the second in the series and this time we deal with having your own blog. There are endless ways of making money once you have traffic, and your blog will get you traffic. The income we will be looking at today will come from Google Adsense.
There are multiple benefits to having a blog including the low cost (or no cost), the resources that will help you get traffic to your blog and the fact that you can provide your blog as an RSS feed. An RSS feed will allow readers to automatically receive your updates into their RSS reader.
Let's get started with our 6 steps.
1. Set up your blog. You will need to decide what you are going to blog about. You should decide on a theme and name your blog appropriately.
There are a number of free ways to set up a blog & to have it hosted for free. We will go with Blogger.com for our first blog.
Blogger will allow you to set up a blog for free they will host it for free and they will ping search engines every time you update, meaning you will get spidered & found.
Visit blogger.com & click the button on the front page labelled 'create your blog now' then follow the step by step instructions that Blogger provide.
Some key settings you will want to get right are:
I) 'Host your blog at Blogger' = Yes
II) 'Add your blog to our listings' = Yes
III) 'Ping Weblogs.com' = Yes
IV) 'Publish Site Feed' = Yes
2. Write some content. Before we move any further there has to be some information on the site & that means that you have to make some entries. You can write some of these entries yourself & some can be quotes from sites of interest to your reader that you can post using the Google Toolbar.
You can download the Google toolbar for free at toolbar.google.com. The toolbar includes a Blogger button. When you visit a site that has something of interest to your readers you can highlight the appropriate text & click the Blogger button. The content will then be added to your blog along with a link back to the site.
3. Once you have some content eg a weeks worth of blogging with 1 or 2 entries for everyday, you can apply for an adsense account. When you sign in to Blogger you will see an invitation to join Adsense. Use this link and apply for an account.
You can find out all about Adsense on the Adsense page but basically you get Google ads on your site & get paid if your visitor clicks them.
Google will decide what adverts show on your site based on the content it finds within.
You need to be aware that Google will decline your application if your site is not considered to have content. Nobody outside of Google knows the precise rules on this.
Once you have been accepted you can get some javascript from Google to add to you site. Copy this & then log in to Blogger.
Once you have logged into your blog you will see that one of the tabs across the top of the screen is labelled 'Template'. Click this. You will need to know a little bit of HTML to help find the right location to paste your Google code. But with a little experimentation you will find the right place for you. See the resource box at the end of this article for more help.
I would suggest that the ads need to be seen when the site loads but should not be too obvious or dominate your site.
4. Write some more content. Try and keep your content coming at regular intervals as a number of directories will check on your site at regular intervals & the smarter ones will visit on a schedule based on your update schedule. They will probably determine this in the hours after you first submit to them. Which is what we will do next.
5. Submit your site to Blog & RSS directories. Because you are hosting at Blogger, Weblogs.com will already be notified when you update your blog. (That means that every time you make a new entry they are automatically notified) You will need to manually submit to the various other directories some of which will require a link on your site to theirs.
You can add these links to your template below your Blogger logo. For a list of directories to get you started visit
6. Keep writing interesting content. Ideally you want people to come back again and again. As with customers its harder to get a new visitor than to keep existing visitors. So make it interesting, in fact make it so interesting that they can't help but tell all their friends about it also.
As with most free ways to make money this will take time to get going, but if you can build a following you will make money.
Can this trap be avoided? Yes - but only if you learn to recognize the gems and reject the scams. Let's discover the top five obstacles that cause many home-based enterprises to fail.
Obstacle #1: Most online opportunities are the same, rehashed programs and schemes. Many opportunities claim to be new and innovative, but really are not. Some look new, but in reality are only a recycled facade! With a little research, you will see that there is nothing "new" at all about them. What is vital is to find an opportunity that is new and different.
Obstacle #2: Many new opportunities are totally new and unproven. The market for the products and services is sufficiently well-established yet and the only people who will get rich with these opportunities are wealthy Fortune 500 companies that have tons of money to spend anyway. Completely new opportunities are very risky! It is important to let others who can better afford it pave the way.
Obstacle #3: Many home-based business opportunities (particularly the MLM schemes) are designed only to make the promoters rich. Average people who are involved in these plans almost never make any money. Only those considered the "heavy hitters" make the real money; they are the ones who have all the connections.
Obstacle #4: Many of the hottest and most exciting money making opportunities are immoral and / or illegal and should be avoided at all costs! If it looks too good to be true, it usually is. Take the "reshipping" industry as an example. This preys on the niavety of those who believe they are simply required to repackage and ship goods onto customers. What they are actually doing is handling stolen goods! Who wants to go to jail? Always try to ask plenty of questions to make sure the opportunity is genuine.
Obstacle #5: Many work at home opportunities are very short-term: they are here today and gone tomorrow! They are pure hype with no type of firm foundation behind them; there is no "real" product or service. When all the hype dies down, the market disappears! Never become involved in a home-based business opportunity based on pure hype.
So, there you have it: the top five obstacles to making money from home.
To avoid these pitfalls, take time to research any make money from home opportunities that appear attractive to you. Check out what other people have to say about the opportunity and how it has worked for them before you become involved.
It is important to satisfy yourself that other people have gained a genuine benefit from the opportunity. This can be difficult to do because obviously the product website is likely to show you only the good things. However, most websites will include testimonials from existing customers and these can provide the best clues as to how good the product really is.
Unfortunately, many "testimonials" are not genuine and it takes some skill to recognize the real ones.
But if you know what to look for you can usually spot some vital clues.
Firstly, if there is a photograph attached to the testimonial, does it look like a professional studio produced portrait? If it does, be wary. Genuine customers are more likely to submit a normal snapshot.
Secondly, if the testimonials concentrate only on the customer's initial impression of the product instead of the results that have been achieved, then again this can be a warning that all is not as it seems. If the product is as good as the promoter claims, there should be genuine testimonials from satisfied customers who have experienced real benefits.
Look out also for "anonymous" testimonials or ones which use only a customer's initials or the country they live in. Such vagueness can also be indicative of a fake "endorsement".
Forums are another great way to check out if a product is as good as it claims. You can search for comments on the product and even post your own enquiry to find out as much as you can before you consider a purchase.
There are many obstacles to making money on the Internet and this article has highlighted a few of the main ones. With careful research and by learning from the experience of others, you can avoid these traps and finally succeed with your goal to make money from home.
Both Jagjit & Susan Aston are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Jagjit has sinced written about articles on various topics from Adsense, Make Money Online and Adwords. Please browse for more information at our websites.. Jagjit's top article generates over 22200 views. to your Favourites.
Susan Aston has sinced written about articles on various topics from Work From Home, Internet Marketing and The Internet. Susan Aston's website, My Make Money From Home Story, tells her true story of going from broke to making a great living online in a year. The site provides information and advice on ways to make money from home. She is also the author of the "Working From. Susan Aston's top article generates over 2400 views. to your Favourites.