When the blogging craze started, blogging was hailed as the new, easy way to make money online. Just slap up a blog, add a little content, throw in a few affiliate links, and your future was assured. You know it’s not that easy, don’t you?
Before you build your blog you need to do niche research. Ask yourself these questions: Is this niche viable, or is there too much competition? Can I beat some of the sites on Google’s first page? Does this niche have buyers, or just tire kickers? Are there some good affiliate programs associated with this niche?
It’s been said to pursue your passion and the money will follow. This is true to a point, but suppose your passion is juggling machetes? Do you think there’s a market for this skill? The broader niche of juggling might suit you better. Don’t limit yourself to things you know now, though. It’s easy to do research online, so if you have a strong desire to learn about a new topic, starting a blog is a great way to get an education.
Now that you have your niche you need to get your blog online. Don’t use free blog sites like blogger.com, or wordpress.com. You need your own domain name and your own hosting. These sites have their uses, but you should never trust your content (and maybe your livelihood!) to a free service.
Okay, you’ve got your domain name and hosting. What platform will you use for your blog? Many people use wordpress for this. You can install wordpress using Fantastico in your cPanel, or you can install it manually. You may want to install wordpress in its own directory rather than in the root folder. This leaves your root folder uncluttered and easy to navigate, but changes your URL from http://www.myblog.com to http://www.myblog.com/some-directory.
Now for the most important part: Content. You need to add posts regularly to your blog. This should be every day, if possible, but at least several times weekly. Set up a schedule and stick to it. An advantage of wordpress is that you can set posts to publish on a certain day. This means you can load posts in advance without having to write new ones every day.
Don’t make the mistake of just adding posts with affiliate links in them. This is a big turn off for visitors. People are coming to your blog for information. If everything on your blog is sell, sell, sell, you will soon be reading it alone.
Now comes the hard part: Traffic. Remember this formula: Content+Backlinks=Traffic. This means that the keyword-optimized content you add to your blog, plus the incoming links you have to your site, equals search engine ranking. The big thing here is backlinks. You can never have enough backlinks.
So, how do you get backlinks? You can post on forums with a link to your site in your signature. You can comment on other relevant blogs. You can submit articles to article directories with a link to your site in your resource box. Post a classified ad on free ad sites with a link to your blog. There are many ways to get backlinks. Just make sure they are relevant to your blog.
To answer the title question, yes it is possible to make money blogging and sometimes a lot of it. The important thing to remember is that it takes work, consistency, and perseverance. Remember that last one, because that’s the real key to making money with a blog.
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