1. The more you write, the more you earn

As a blogger, your primary task is content creation. This is because without content, you won't have traffic, and without traffic, you won't have an income. So content comes first.

However, there are many ways you can create content.

My favorite way is to speak, rather than write. I use a speech recognition program on both my Mac and my PC, to help me to create content more quickly. Although you'll need to train yourself to dictate your thoughts, the time you spend with the program in the first few weeks is amply repaid, because you've got more content on your blog or blogs, and thus more traffic.

2. Plan your blog posts each week and month

Planning your blogging is vital. I teach bloggers, and the first habit I encourage them to acquire is the habit of planning everything they do. Planning your content is vital, because some days you just don't feel like writing.

On these days, your plan gets you blogging, because you know exactly what you're writing about on any given day.

One of my favorite tactics is to create series. Once you've planned a series of posts on a particular topic, writing the series is easy.

A series can be anywhere from three to ten posts long. Here's an idea: create a "30 days" series - this gives you 30 blog posts to plan in advance. Once you've done the planning, you'll be amazed at how quickly you can write the series.

3. Create a network of blogs

One blog, or a network of blogs on the same topic?

Initially, focus on one blog, at least for the first year. Your first, primary blog will build traffic via the search engines, and this foundation of traffic is a real blessing - once you have hundreds of readers each day, you can USE that traffic.

After your first year, I advise that you hive off some of your blog's categories to make new blogs. This is because an enormous blog becomes unwieldy. Posts get buried, and it's hard to give previous posts the attention they deserve.

4. Where's the money? Set income goals for your blog

You must set income goals for your blog. Start small: a dollar a day. Then increase your income goals by ten times as soon as you reach a goal. So your first goal is a dollar a day, then ten dollars a day, then $100 a day, then $1000 a day, and so on.

5. Boost your traffic: the more readers, the higher your blog's income

Finally, as important as writing and content creation in general is, nothing beats marketing your blog. To get more traffic, you need to market your blog. So do it, every day - it's not optional, you MUST market your blog.

So, there you have five tips to help you to make money blogging - use them and prosper.