Blogging for Money

Can You Really Make Money Blogging?

Blogging for money is another home business idea. Yes, you CAN make money blogging. But to make money by blogging does take some skill...

Blogging is a hot, fairly new, craze on the Internet. Seems like everyone these days has a blog, partly because you can start one for free in a number of places. But having a blog doesn't mean you can automatically make money by blogging. It's not that simple. But let's back up a minute...

What Is Blogging?

In case you somehow don't know what a blog is (maybe you're fairly new to the Internet?), blogs started out being called weblogs. Somewhere along the way, the "we" was dropped off that term and it just became "blog."

Early blogs were mostly online journals, where people could express their personal thoughts or opinions on a topic, journal a journey of some kind, or share a passion for something with the world through the web.

But savvy Internet Marketers soon found out that there was "gold in them thar hills"! There are a number of ways you can use blogging for money these days, for example:

Monetize a typical blog. With this model, you make money blogging by creating a typical journal or opinion blog, but you add advertising to it, either in the form of Google Adsense ads or affiliate banners or text links of some type. My neglected Online Home Business Connection blog is built in that model.
Build a content site with blogging software. One of the beauties of using blog software like WordPress or a blogging platform like Blogger or Typepad is that you don't have to know HTML or web design to produce an attractive, well-formatted blog. So, it can be a fairly easy way to produce a content site by publishing articles as blog posts. Another great thing about blogs is that they are database driven, so all of the content is categorized and archived, which makes it easy to find later on, for both you and your visitors. Again, you make money by blogging this way from running ads or selling your own products from the content pages. Your Cheap Travel Guide is a content site built using that model via Wordpress.
Use a blog to drive traffic to your main content site. Search engines love blogs, so you can take blogging for money in a slightly different direction by using your blog posts to link back to your main site. Blogs get indexed and listed quite quickly, sometimes even within hours! So, linking to other sites in a blog is a great way to get the search engines to follow the links and find the other site. Of course, those links will also help your human visitors find that site. You might have found this site through my blog, HomeBiz BUZZ.
Post product reviews as blog entries. Another way to use a blog to make money is purely as an affiliate tool. You can post reviews of the products you're pushing and then include your affiliate links in them. So, each post is a review of a different product.
Get paid for blogging for others. It's not common, but it IS possible to get paid for writing blog posts for other people too, especially if you have special expertise in a topic. For example, I am paid well for blogging about asthma, COPD and allergies on a health website. Some sites, while they don't pay you directly, will let you share in revenue, such as AdSense clicks, that is earned on your blog post pages as a result of the content you've blogged.

What It Takes to Get Started in Blogging for Money

You can start to make money by blogging with very little investment and not too much technical expertise either. Of course, blogging for others is the cheapest and easiest way to blog for money. All you'll really need are your credentials and Internet access of some kind.

Making money with your own blog will require an account (often free) with a blogging provider such as Google's Blogger, Wordpress.com or someone similar. Unfortunately, you may not be free to monetize as you like with all of those platforms. For instance, while Blogger allows Adsense to be plugged in, you don't have a lot of control over how. Wordpress.com, which is also free, doesn't allow Adsense or affiliate links at all. You could use them to drive traffic to another site, however.

I, and most other experts, recommend that you get a webhosting account and domain name and then install the free Wordpress software and create your blog that way. Wordpress has thousands of free "themes" (like templates) that are completely customizable. There are also plugins, tiny pieces of add-on software that allows you to monetize, organize and format your blog in countless ways.

Pros of Blogging for Money

The thing that's great about blogging platforms is that they require very little technical expertise. So almost anyone can learn to use them. You can be up and running and make money by blogging in no time, at least potentially.

And as I mentioned above, Google (and other search engines) love blogs, so you can be getting traffic within days, if you know how to optimize your blog and publicize it.

Cons of Blogging

On the other hand, tons of new blogs are launched everyday, so you can also fall off the radar pretty quickly, unless you're publishing new content regularly.

That brings me to the other downside of blogging, which is the need to continually keep it fresh. Unless you're just using a blog as a content management model to create a content website, then you need to be publishing new posts at least weekly, if you hope to keep people (and the search engines) interested. That can be a burden for some people.

How to Learn More About Blogging for Money

It's easy to go wrong with a blog. So, if this is a home business idea that you'd like to pursue, be sure you learn all you can about how to succeed at making money with your blog. I bought the book below a couple of years ago, when it first came out and it's been updated since then. I highly recommend it... easy to read, affordably priced, the methods are solid and they work. Check it out...

Another resource for learning how to blog profitably is Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. Darren is known as "THE" expert on blogging for a living. You can check out this page on his blog, or even think about buying his brand new step-by-step workbook: