When most people think of what it means to make money blogging, two words seem to come up almost automatically: “instant cash”. And yet blogging for money isn’t your ticket to quick wealth as it’s often made out to be. A majority of today’s most lucrative blogs weren’t managed by people who used quick-fix solutions. Instead, these bloggers relied on long-term solutions that would ensure their blog’s place in the online world.
One of the first things that you have to do as a professional blogger is to get ready for all the work that lies ahead of you. Keep in mind that your blog won’t be the only one of its kind that’s already up and running, which means that competition for reader’s attention is much stiffer now. In addition, professional blogging won’t yield much revenue for the first six months, or even for the first year! A blog needs to be paid a lot of attention to, especially during its first year or so. If you already spend most of your day in your full-time job, you have to be prepared to devote around 4 more hours of your time just to maintain and update your site.
Despite these challenges, professional blogging can prove to be very fulfilling once your site has gained a foothold in its own niche and readership base. It’s like getting your cake and eating it, too: getting paid for writing about the things you love the most! Before beginning, however, consider these basic principles for professional blogging. Follow these principles, and you’ll find that blogging for money can be as enjoyable as it is profitable:
1. Decide on a niche to specialize in, and plan out your blog accordingly:
Will you be writing about sports? Or will you be running a steady stream of political commentary on your site? Are you considering putting up restaurant reviews? Whatever your chosen niche is, make sure that the rest of your blog fits well with it. Choose a blog template, for example, that matches your overall theme, and keep your blog posts within the bounds of your chosen niche.
You can afford to create an off-topic blog post every so often, but if you want to gain your readers’ trust and establish yourself as an expert, it’s better to be consistent with your blog entries. Let’s say that your blog specializes in making food reviews. If this were the case, you should try sticking to food-related topics and steer clear of those that are drastically out-of-place, such as caring for tarantulas or how to choose a new cell phone.
A cardinal rule concerning this is to pick a topic that you’re really interested in, one that you could write about for a good, long while. In other words, choose a subject that you actually love. It’s hard to fake enthusiasm for a topic that you don’t actually care much about, and it’s a tactic that usually backfires. For example, it isn’t a good idea to start a blog about photography just because a subject like that can get you a lot of traffic. Instead, choose a niche that you feel strongly about, whether it’s food, politics, religion, photography, or even something as esoteric as zoology.
Remember, a good blog is one that’s written with obvious zeal and passion, and dealing with a topic you love ensures that you won’t get sick of writing about it year after year.
2. Update frequently:
Updating your blog regularly can make a big difference in the volume of traffic that your blog receives. Because site traffic usually translates into revenue, you have to ensure that readers are visiting your blog frequently. Encourage them to visit by updating your content as regularly as you can. People don’t want to return to a blog only to find a post that they’d already read before! Make your readers’ visits worth their time by providing them with new content as often as possible.
Frequent updating also ensures that Google and other search engines index your site frequently, making your blog more visible and accessible to others. If you don’t want your blog to fall into obscurity, you have to work at giving your readers a lot of fresh entries.
3. Take advantage of ad networks and affiliate programs:
Once you’ve got your blog up and running, you can look into more direct ways of earning money from your site. A good way to jumpstart this is by signing up for Google Adsense, which rewards you for each click that an advertising link receives from your site.
You can also sign up for an affiliate program such as Amazon.com Associates, Clickbank, or Azoogle. These kinds of programs will reward you whenever a visitor from your blog makes a purchase or signs up for a service that you’ve advertised through a link in your site.
Whether or not you like it, blogging for money will always involve some form of advertising in your blog. But no matter how good your affiliate program is, remember that its success will still depend on the number of people who go to your blog. The heavier your site traffic is, the higher the chance of people clicking on your ad links.
4. Write quality posts:
No matter how frequently you update your site, and no matter how many ad networks you’re part of, you can’t earn any long-term revenue unless you offer your readers a lot of quality, credible content. Nobody wants to read something that’s poorly or shabbily written, so do your best to write as well and as accurately as you can.
When your readers realize that they can rely on you to give them solid advice and credible information regarding your niche, they’re bound to return to your blog, as well as create backlinks to your site that will boost your search engine ranking. Once you earn a reputation as an expert with credible opinions and insight about your niche, your readers will come back to your site again and again, generating traffic that spells into profit for you and your blog.
Although there are different ways through which people make money blogging, the best tactic is still to provide quality content to your readers. After all, your visitors aren’t frequenting your site just to marvel at your blog template! Nonetheless, it’s also important to come up with a blog theme that works well with the niche you’re dealing with, as well as to use advertising networks and affiliate programs wisely. Once you’ve gotten the hang of it, you’re sure to be blogging your way towards a real and sustainable profit!
How to Stop Spammers from posting Comments on your Blog!
July 2nd, 2009Askimet Plugin
By Pro Submit
So you’ve setup a blog and you’re getting several of those pesky please moderate emails. What do you do now? In this article we will discuss article publishing tips, comment approval tips and hot to get a wordpress api key, installing askimet comment plugin on you wordpress site .
Askimet for comment spam comes preinstalled on each Wordpress Blog. Askimet is a wordpress plugin that helps bloggers filter through the the comment spam that is prevalent on the internet You should activate the askimet plugin, which will assist in managing comments. You can save time reviewing comments by having Askimet on your website blog Bloggers often receive comments on their articles after publishing them.
Activate your Askimet Plugin. In order to activate your askimet plugin, you will need a wordpress api key. You can setup an account with wordpress at http://en.wordpress.com/api-keys and they will email you your wordpress api key, once the plugin is activated you will have three folders for your comments. A pending, approved and spam comments folder. Having Askimet installed on your wordpress blog will make your blogging experience a little bit easier.
How to on Articles: Add articles to your blog on content that is relevant to your site subject. Bloggers from other sites may add your posting to their web site and often send a link back from their page. This will help you to get rank on the search engines for the keyword phrases in the title of your articles
Get quality articles on your blog daily: best article submission
Comment Approval Tips: Not all comments are alike. You get relant comment by a reader, comments by other blogs who have published your article or a snippet with alink back your site, and then theres SPAM. Be sure to look through all the comments as even bloggers comments with a linkback to your blog can get inadvertently added to your spam folder.
Bill Simms MLM Web Marketing Trainer
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Tags: askimet, askimet plugin, comment plugin, comment spam, Wordpress Plugins
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