How to Make Money with a Blog: Tips for Monetizing your Blog

Blogging can be one of the most cost effective, time efficient and profitable ways of making money online. While these facts are indisputable, they unfortunately cause a great many people to begin blogging either in an inappropriate fashion or where they do not have the required level of commitment from which to make a success of the procedure. The first step to successful blogging is recognising what blogging actually is and what precisely is required if blogging success is to be achieved. Only where that time is taken in the very first instance is blogging ever likely to prove profitable, as there are certain mistakes which can be made at the outset which will limit - if not in fact preclude - the chances of ever achieving the desired objectives.

The first thing to understand about a blog is that a blog is very different from a website. While in theory a website can be created, left thereafter largely to its own devices and still achieve long term popularity, a blog depends upon long term attention and updating to both know and maintain any form of success. Viewing a blog as an online diary is an excellent means of understanding the concept. A blog is effectively a record of events, thoughts, or updated information on a carefully chosen and closely defined subject.

When considering the subject upon which to create a blog, many people make the critical mistake of considering which subject is likely to afford the greatest level of potential for revenue generation. This is a mistake which could soon sound the deathknell for any blog, simply because it may not be a subject upon which they have enough knowledge and thus potential writing material. It is no secret, for example, that personal finance is one of the most profitable subjects on which to write but it will only pay for those who have the necessary, quality knowledge which other people are likely to find interesting and valuable.

Deciding the subject for a blog is simply about picking a subject which you are interested in and on which you are knowledgeable. This may be cooking and recipes, it may be stamp collecting, or it may be caring for your beloved pet dog.

From this point on, this page will assume that a blog is to be created on the subject of caring for a pet dog.

When the subject of a blog has been determined, it is important to refine the choice before actually creating a blog. Often referred to as a niche, the precise subject should be a very specific aspect of the wider topic. This is principally to reduce competition on the Web and make your blog more likely to be found via search engines. In this instance, the title of the blog will be, "Dog Care and Dog Grooming for Beginners."

The URL of a blog is simply the address at which it will exist on the Internet. Most free blog hosting platforms will have their address as part of the URL with individual bloggers able to determine only part of the address. The URL should be similar to the title of the blog - though ideally not identical - and contain all the principal key words. The self-determined part of the URL in this instance will be made to be, "beginner-dog-care-and-grooming"

It is important to choose a blog hosting platform which is both suited to your technical abilities and which permits the revenue generation tools you ultimately intend using. Blogger is an excellent choice in all of these respects. It is easy to use for even the most inexperienced Web content creator, it is operated by Google so incorporates Google Adsense and it now incorporates the facility to hyperlink directly to related products on Amazon.

When the blog has been created, it is important to start making some posts before even contemplating earning money. The only way in which it will be possible to earn money from a blog is by obtaining traffic from around the Web and by far the best way of doing so is by writing original, relevant and useful content. An excellent first post on a blog about dog care and dog grooming would be regarding choosing the right puppy and what you will need to care for the puppy from day one.

Note that Google Adsense (where you already have an account) is an exception and can be added to the blog immediately. The advantage of using Blogger is that this can be achieved as part of the process of setting up the blog.

Blog posts should be made to be bite sized pieces of information, of ideally just a few hundred words. This is for a number of reasons.

1. Visitors to blogs are looking for quality information in easily digestible chunks.
2. The idea is always to leave the reader wanting more to help ensure they return to your blog
   
3. Including too much information in posts could conceivably mean you do not have enough quality information to post as frequently as is required.

Tip: Try to make around three posts on day one of your blog. Initial visitors finding a blog with only one post may not be convinced that you will post regularly and be less likely to follow your blog or return at a later date. Thereafter, two to three posts per week will in most instances be sufficient to retain the interest of followers and the search engines.

Much is made of keywords and phrases when making blog posts and otherwise writing online. While it is important to include such words in the titles of posts and in the text, it is equally important not to do so to excess and spoil the flow of your work as well as alienate the search engines with what can be deemed to be keyword spamming!

Whenever a Web user lands on your blog, it is imperative that you capture their attention in those first few seconds. However good and relevant your text may be, it is much less likely to have this effect than quality photos and even videos. Incorporating original and relevant photographs and videos on your blog is therefore an excellent idea for this reason and more. On a dog care and grooming blog, you may wish to have photos of your own dog (amusing is good!) and videos taken from such as YouTube, showing the procedures which you are describing. Blogger affords a number of easy ways to include photos, while it is the, "Embed," code which should be copied from the video you wish to use on YouTube and incorporated in your blog.

Further on in this procedure, it is necessary to consider how to obtain inbound links to your blog. It is important also to consider, however, outbound links to other sources of information on your subject for blog visitors. This is a practical convenience which will be appreciated by visitors and will also be acknowledged by Google and other search engines when ranking your postings.

Links can very easily be incorporated in the side bar of a Blogger creation with a dedicated linking panel. Where you wish to incorporate hyperlinks within the text of your blog, however, and no tool is provided for this purpose, you will have to employ such as basic HTML.

Below is the simplest HTML for including a hyperlink in text. Simply replace URL you wish to link to (but not the quotation marks) with the full site URL (including http onwards) and text you wish to be hyperlinked with the word or words which you wish to form the link. Remember always, though, that links should be relevant and likely to be useful to your blog visitors.

Only when the initial posts are in place is it time to start looking at ways to earn money from your blog. Google Adsense and incorporating relevant Amazon products for sale are excellent ways to begin this process and if you do not already have the necessary accounts, you will have to apply from the home sites. Remember only that featuring a few, extremely relevant affiliate products is much more likely to prove successful than plastering them all over your blog. Too many affiliate products will irritate readers and may lead to them viewing your blog as spam.

When your blog is up and running, it is important to promote it and yourself around the Web. This must be done in a legitimate fashion, however, and spamming must be avoided at all costs. The links to the right are to some useful sites which you may wish to sign up for if you have not already done so. Remember to explore each site in the first instance, determine how it works and be seen to contribute to the wider community and make friends, rather than simply submitting links to your blog posts.

Thank you for your visit and I hope that you have found this page to be some use. If you do have any feedback, or tips you wish to share, either may be left in the space below.