One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, "Can You Really Make Money from Blogging?" People want to know if there's some way to profit from the time they spend maintaining their web logs or personal online journals. My answer is an emphatic "YES," because I do it... everyday! Today I'll share with you how I do it. Let me begin by saying that I don't make thousands per month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many making hundreds. Since I don't put in a lot of time maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my laptop (on a wireless connection)... watching the clouds roll by. Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my regular websites that are set up as my "money machines." The search engines visit my blogs more often than they visit my regular sites, for more details visit to www.your-own-blog.com and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners. This does help the search engine rankings of these sites MASSIVELY. How Do I Monetize My Blogs? I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for... and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on. I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on the webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs. I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find affiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs. I do things like product reviews, for more details visit to www.blogers-guide-to-profit.com how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + "affiliate program" at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websites with suitable affiliate programs to you. How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs? I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of blogging software. You have other choices... my programmer recommended this one to me. I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy to set up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them on Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST! The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your blogs often is a technique called "blogging and pinging." It's a method of notifying all of the major search engines, and blog directories, each time that you update your blog. The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites. It's very powerful. I won't go into too many details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussion board and ask any and all questions! Examples of Profitable Blogs? I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs :-) To show you how simple it can be I'll show you just ONE. It's less than 2 months old :-) The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone as an example, it's instantly ripped off. So, I'm going to "sacrifice" one making me about $60 per day from affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSense revenue The above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the term "cure nail fungus." It's a small niche but one that makes me $2400 per month... just from that one blog. If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4: That happens to be one of my pages too :-) I won't tell you what ALL I'm up to on that page... that's another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else's domain... so it improves your link popularity. !
I often see paid reviews being raved about on many of the top blogging sites. The idea is that once you build your page rank up to something decent, like a pr4 or pr5 then you can start selling links on your blog. Wait, wasn't I talking about paid review? Oh, that's right, it's the same thing! Yes, those 'white hat' A-Lister bloggers are actually selling links on their blogs. The links are just contained in a review. Advertisers like this idea because by buying all these links they can artificially boost their rankings by manipulating the search engine data...and the A-Listers help them out and make some money. For more details go to www.blog-and-ping.com. The problem with this business model is that Google doesn't like it and will 'slap' your blog down. By this I mean your page rank will be reduced or wiped out altogether. Everytime there is a Google update the bloggers come out crying in droves! "My PR5 is now a PR2" they all cry. This kills one of their sources of income. A waste of time in the end.
Another idea that always sounds good on paper but in the end only works for the top bloggers is building a list. By list I mean an email list that you can spam with a number of affiliate products. The problem with this method is that by the time you, the regular average blogger get your hands on a new affiliate product, the top bloggers have already sold it to almost everybody in the niche! It's like a pyramid scheme. It only works out well for those at the VERY top.
Another time waster is working on building up your feed count. Your feed reader count is supposed to be important in establishing credibility for your blog. Again, the credibility is supposed to make your readers trust you more. That way when you try to sell them another "get rich quick" book they are more likely to buy it...because they trust you. You are credible.
Notice that none of these methods involve driving search engine traffic to your sites? That is because most of these A-Lister blogger types are really newbies in disguise. They haven't got a clue as to increase search traffic to their blogs yet they pretend to have all the answers regarding how to make money online! For more help visit www.atoz-about-rss.com. The basic idea behind A-List blogging is to first become a famous blogger and then to cash in on that fame by impressing newbies with your stature and selling them everything you can get your hands on. The problem is that only so many of you can become or will become famous bloggers!
So in the end the vast majority of you who are following this model are going to fail. It is a matter of statistic. This is why more and more people are learning about niche blogging.
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