Starting a Blog: Next steps
Posted on January 16, 2008
Filed Under Making Money | Leave a Comment
If you read the first steps to blogging, you should now have the beginnings of a blog plan. You aren’t quite finished planning yet though. If you are going to monetize (make money) from your blog, you will need to decide what methods you are going to use. You will want to make sure that your theme and blog platform will allow and accomodate your choices. A little advance planning here will save you a lot of time and aggravation later.
There are several methods of monetization that you can use and different subjects and audiences perform better with some than others. I am going to cover a few of the more basic methods.
AdSense: This is pretty simple to get started. Google has made it simple and has multiple options. You can add Adsense for content where you see ads that are related to the content of your blog or post. They also have an option for search and YouTube. Drawback to AdSense is the initial payout is $100 and for a small or beginning blogger it can take time to build to that amount. You get paid when people click on the ads. You can apply for AdSense here.
Affiliate marketing: Affiliate market is basically earning a commission for referring someone to a website where they purchase or sign up for something. There are many, many affiliate possibilities open. One of the easier ones is Amazon.com. Their affiliate program is easy to set up and you can select products that fit into your subject matter. They also have a text link option that selects keywords from your posts and turns them into links to Amazon books and products.
More Affiliate programs that will accept small/medium sized blogs:
Widget Bucks
Earn $$ with WidgetBucks
Pay Per Post: Your Momma blogs…and we pay her to do it!
This is a strategy where you are paid to post a review of certain products. The amount of payment depends on the product, and often your alexa ranking. If you have a popular blog, this can be very lucrative but be forewarned, too many of these will drive away your readership.
Text Link Ads are another possibility eventually but they do have minimum requirements for readership and subscribers. The text links are scripted into your blog and they scan each post and link pertinent keywords to advertisers . When you apply, if you don’t qualify now they are supposed to send an email when you do.
As you can see there are many options and choices to make when you are considering monetizing a blog. My advice is to choose a couple, check out their site and investigate some other blogs to see what they look like and how they are placed. After you get your blog up and running, see which performs best for you and which don’t. Each blog’s readership is a bit different and will react differently to different ads.
First step to blogging: Don’t write a post!
Posted on January 14, 2008
Filed Under Beginning Blogging | 2 Comments
How do I get started blogging is frequently asked. Getting started is actually quite simple in itself. You can go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and sign up for a blog. Both of them make it really simple to do the actual mechanics of starting a blog and they are even free. Then all you need to do is start posting.
STOP!
Before you select a blogging platform or write a post, there is some work to do. If you are planning to make money on your blog (or even if you aren’t), there are some basic questions that you need to ask (and answer) before you even select a blog platform. Blogging for money is a business. It may be a part time business, it may be a fun business but it’s a business and if you are going to be successful, you need a plan.
Here are some questions that will help you develop a plan for your blog.
- What is my purpose? The purpose of your blog will determine a lot of things like blog platform, theme, name, etc. Even blogs whose main purpose is to make money, need to determine how they are going to accomplish it. Having a blog and saying “come here and pay me” won’t make you very popular. If you already know what you want to write about, you are halfway there. If you don’t, you will want to give it some thought. A hobby or something you are interested in is a good place to start.
- Write it down. Once you have decided the main purpose of your blog, write it down. Similar to having a mission statement, it will keep you focused on what you want to accomplish and maybe how you want to do it. It will also help you to write a description of your blog when you are ready.
- Check out the competition. Every good businessman knows who the competition is and what they are doing. Spend some time reading other blogs on your topic and make a list of things you like about their sites and things you don’t like. It won’t do you much good to make a list of sites you like or sites you don’t like, you actually have to take a few minutes and analyze what it is about that site that you like. It will help you when you get ready to set up your blog as well as when you start writing your posts. If you find a site that you love to read, ask yourself why you like it? Is it the blog set up? Is it the writer’s personality or is it the great information offered?
By now you should have a written mission statement and a list of likes and don’t likes. You should be starting to get a clearer mental picture of what you want to do with your blog, but we aren’t done yet.
- Determine your audience. Who is going to want to read your blog? What do they look like? No, really. Think about who your average reader is going to be and make a visualization of them. What do they wear, eat, play with and do for a living. If you are going to entertain or educate someone and hopefully make money in the process, you have to know something about them.
- Make a list of broad categories. Even if your blog is about one specific thing such as a football team, you will want to include different aspects of it. Categories could be players, competition, special teams, coaching, etc. This will give your blog some depth and make it more interesting to a larger audience. Ben Cook from a Blogging Experiment writes a little about how a narrow scope hurt him on a blog here.
- Make a list of topics. Darren Rowse at Problogger uses a tool called mind mapping. It’s a process of taking all the possible topics, writing them down and then building on them. You will want to have some topic ideas for most of your main categories before you start blogging. Believe me this will save you on days when you don’t feel like writing, can’t think of a thing to write and just want to cover your head and go back to sleep. The hardest thing about blogging can be deciding what to write about or remembering what that great idea was that you had last night in bed.
Does it sound like work yet? It is but it’s also a lot of fun. It’s very rewarding both to write and to watch your readership grow over time. The blogging community is great and although competition can be keen, most bloggers are ready to jump in and help or offer advice.
Next in the series, I will talk about choosing a name, platform and theme.
Why Blog Dollars?
Posted on January 8, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I started my first blog about 3 years ago. It was a personal blog and eventually, life happened and I closed it down. At this time, I maintain several blogs. Two are related to my business and one to my hobby farm.
I discovered the income potential of blogging almost by accident. In trying to create a better blog, I came across several that were touting six figure incomes from their blogs. Needless to say, it got my attention.
So I am an average everyday kind of person, and this is an experiment to combine all the things I have learned and see if “Jane Blow” can make money at a blog. In reading various blogs, I have noticed that there are few if any “six figure” women bloggers. I am not sure if that is really true or not. There are certainly some popular and well written blogs by women but I don’t see any of them touting their income. One would assume they have some income, maybe they just don’t shout about it.
My other blogs bring in some income but certainly not enough to feed the kids every month but they are aimed at a very small local audience and I really never expected them to earn anything. I am going to be using my other blogs as case studies as they are all still in the infant stage with under 20 subscribers. I made a slew of mistakes with them and I learned a lot doing it.
I don’t expect to make a six figure income from this blog or any of the others but maybe it will help some other blogger not make the same mistakes I did. This blog will be the hub that ties the other’s together and documents their progress. I don’t think that most of us start blogging expecting a full time income but some do. Heck, I’d just like to make enough to offset my satellite internet bill.
I will be documenting what I learn along the way, passing on links, looking in depth at what works and what doesn’t as well as sharing my mistakes. And I am sure that I will make a few more before I get it down to a science or throw my hands up in frustration and go back to blogging just because I feel like it.
« go back