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Make Money With Blogging – Few Ways on How to Make Your Blog a Cash-Making Machine

The term ‘blogging’ is actually derived from web log which refers to an online journal, typically used to write down anything and everything. While blogs were originally for personal use and within small communities and group of friends, it has now changed with time and people are using it for all sorts of things, business included. Did you know that through blogging you can actually generate an income and make a little pocket money? If you didn’t then it’s time you did and believe it too because many people are using this simple way to fund their lives.

You may be wondering how something as simple as a blog can bring in money, so wonder no more because here are the top 5 ways on how you can change your ordinary blog into a cash making machine.

1. By using Google AdSense. When you’ve got your blog up and running, no matter what the content, register with Google AdSense for some great advertisements. When you register with them, you’re basically giving them the right to display ads on your blog space which gives them publicity and you, money. How it works is fairly simple, there are all sorts of advertisements running, and when it’s placed on your site it can be viewed by the public eye. So when a visitor visits your site and clicks on the ad, a certain amount of money is credited into your account. The more visitors you have, the more clicks you get and the more clicks you get the more money you make.

2. Use affiliate marketing within your blog. Affiliate marketing is a money making method that’s done online and it’s quite a lucrative business as well. Basically, it works in such a way that you’re the middle person between customers and a selling company and whenever a customer makes a purchase from the company through you, you make money based on commission. With your blog, you can advertize the products sold, write information rich articles and give reasons as to how and why the item being promoted can help people in their daily lives and basically encourage the public to buy the product. In order for you to find a product to be an affiliate marketer, you can use your search engine or sign up with ClickBank where there are companies registered who are looking for affiliate marketing. If you feel like you’re a persuasive person through words, then this could be your best bet.

3. Offer your writing services for paid reviews. There are many products and services out there and as more and more companies bloom, the industry becomes a tough one. So if you have got enough traffic to your blog, you can offer to write reviews for various products and services and have the company pay you for it. They need the publicity to advertize your products and when you write about it in your blog, it reaches a lot of people. Reviews sometimes work better than advertisements because they’re meant to be unbiased, truthful and words of a user.

These are only three ways to help you make some money online, there are quite a lot of other methods so do a little homework about blogging and making money and see what you can do to start your own little business online.

The Wide and Growing World of the Blog

If you begin to explore what blogging is for the very first time you will likely find yourself barraged by a plethora of strange terms. You will soon begin to think that they are just inventing a type of blog by attaching a random letter in front of ‘log”. Which is probably not too far from the reality. There is no need to fear though. We have created a short and concise guide to the world of blogging to help you make sense of a type of media that seems to be taking over the Internet.

First of all the basics

What is a blog?

A blog is a form of communication written from a personal perspective for public consumption. The key is that a blog is not objective. It is completely subjective and that is part of the reason for the popularity of blogs. When you read one you almost feel like you “know” the person writing it. The blog typically communicates on a person-to-person level instead of addressing itself to a wider audience. So, if we can summarize it we would basically describe a blog as something communicated on a personal level to the general public. And yes that seems to be an oxymoron. However, it is probably the best one sentence description of what a blog is without describing the technology itself. And since we are going to be discussing the various types of blogs we need to understand it at its most basic level.

FORMS OF THE BLOG

A blog ‘format’ is nothing other than the type of media used to create the blog. In an ever-increasing digital world we are given a large variety of options, which we can use to communicate with other people. Naturally, most of these devices have been used to generate a blog. And if they not, they soon will be. So, with that in mind lets discuss some of the most prevalent variations on the traditional blog.

VLOG / VLOGGING / VIDEO BLOGGING

The ‘vlog’ is something that emerged relatively recently. Essentially it is exactly what its name describes. It is a video recording addressed on a personal basis to the general public. This form of the blog has been adopted primarily by the corporate world, which sees it as a new way to communicate with the end-user or consumer. This is not a media that the average user has adopted – yet. However, with time expect this form of the blog to gain wider acceptance and greater popularity.

A new and emerging type of “Vlog” is the Vodcast, which is nothing more than a “live” version of the vlog.

Some helpful links for Vlogs:

Wikpedia entry for Vlog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog>

evideoshare http://www.evideoshare.com/> offers the ability to share vlogs with others

Vodcasts.tv http://www.vodcasts.tv/> offers a comprehensive directory of vlogs on almost any subject

MOBLOGGING / MOBILE BLOGGING

Moblogging is a “style” of blogging. Essentially it means to blog on the go from a portable device of some type. Most of these types of blogs take the form of pictures with the picture of something serving the same purpose of words.

One good reason to consider a moblog is when you want to give someone else the experience of being at an event without being physically present. Of course this also applies to the aforementioned vlog. The “new baby” seems to be a popular reason to moblog. And the concept of ‘babies’ can be applied very loosely since corporations are also using it to introduce new products with just as much frequency. One could almost make the case for giving this type of blog entry (the photo) the moniker of “Phlog” but then again do we really need another term to keep track of? No, probably not.

The other form of a moblog is the blog entry made from a digital communication device such as a bluetooth or a pocket pc. Essentially, there is no difference between a traditional blog and this type of moblog other than the fact that you are doing it on the go.

Some helpful links for Moblogs:

Flickrblog http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2004/07/turn_any_blog_i.html is a service that allow you to quickly post pictures to your blog

SnapNpost http://www.snapnpost.com/?source=adwords is another company that offers assistance with posting photos

FLOG (s) / FAKE BLOGS

As soon as a new technology emerges it is only shortly thereafter that it is adopted for nefarious purposes by the business world. Of course the purpose is only nefarious from the point of view of the consumer. For the corporation it is usually a pretty good idea. And of course this applies to the’flog’. A flog is just what it says. It is a fake blog. It is a blog written from the perspective of a fictional individual for the purpose of hyping some product or service or in some cases for the sole purpose of deception.

Of course corporations aren’t the only ones to do flogs. It is probably just as popular with individuals but most of them are able to keep it secret much better and for a longer period of time.

PODCASTING

Podcasting may seem to fall outside the scope of the blog but in most cases it does not. A podcast is nothing more than a personal radio show, which is broadcast from the individuals’ own computer or other digital device. The only major difference in a podcast and a blog is that the podcast usually lasts for a certain period of time and is given “live” whereas the various types of blogs are usually a record of what happened in the past whether that past is a few minutes or several days.

3 Cutting-Edge Blog Directories With FREE Submission That Can Help Your Blog Travel in SEO Space

A good way to get your blog out there in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Space is to use blog directories. Blog directories are websites which will categorize your blogs under many different categories. Usually the best blog directories are human edited, meaning that each submitted blog is reviewed by a person, not a robot, who will decides whether our blog belongs in their directory or not.

Now not only will blog directories help get your blog to people who are interested in the topic you write about but they will also provide strong back links and can help your posts get ranked in search engines. Also, note that many people search blog directories to research blogs that are similar to their blogs.

Did I hear someone ask “Whats a backlink?

A backlink is a link that one blog site gets from another blog site or static website. Backlinks can make a big impact on a website’s ranking in search engine results. This is why they are considered so important for improving a blogs SEO ranking. Search engines will use their own methods to calculate rankings using multiple factors to display search results.

One of the many methods that can help your rankings is to submit your sites to blog and article directories. I am only going to focus on three directories I have recently submitted this blog to. In another post I will talk about article directories and perhaps other blog directories..

I am only listing those sites that I recently submitted to in June of this year and have a easy user-friendly portal. So, check them out for yourself. As I continue with my research I may post about others later after I submit my sites.

Ontoplist

The site is easy to navigate. It does not make you feel like it is a “spammy site”I was quite surprised that the site I listed was indexed so quickly. So I am encouraged to submit more sites.

Blogflux

Blogflux lets you know on the first page that they currently feature 157,056 blogs. So you get excited about adding your blogs to the number. They stress the type of blogs they WILL NOT accept. It is an easy submission process.

Blogarama

Is also stupidly easy to navigate. It has been around for a long time so their is a high level of reliability. Their blog directory tab when clicked does not allow you the opportunity to search the categories. But I they make it easy to contact them. So I will let them know that this boomer is concerned. I am sure it will be corrected.

I used one of my handy forms from the Blog Management System to record the name of the directory, user name and password plus the specific blog I submitted.

If you have other favorite blog directories please share.

How to Increase Your Blog Traffic Faster

Creating a blog and posting on it is not the end of everything. You need to popularize and promote it for garnering traffic on it. Whatever you post after working so hard, you need response from the audience in the form of comments and shares. Here are few ways in which you can increase the traffic on your blog:

Know your Target Audience

You need to evaluate the interests of your target audience and accordingly create your content. Evaluating the needs of your audience is critically important to be successful as a blogger. If you fail to do that, you are looking at missing the bull’s-eye. Developing the content as per the requirements of your target audience is something which will determine your success in the long run. Start developing a buyer persona. Buyer persona includes the demographic and general interest of the audience.

Produce Evergreen Content

Create content which will not become irrelevant with the passage of time. Such a type of content can live forever on the web and arouses interest in the mind of the viewers for a long time to come. Make sure not to write time sensitive related events which appear quite popular at one point of time and then lose their lustre immediately after the news becomes stale.

Using Keywords and SEO

If you want to drive big time traffic on your website, making use of SEO related keywords is absolutely essential. If you start writing blog posts which do not accumulate any searches on Google it is of no use; in fact you will be literally wasting your time and energy in making all those efforts. Google drives countless searches over the internet every day.

Long tail keywords are keywords containing more than 3 phrases which generate targeted traffic on Google. Use such long tail word which increases your chance in getting higher ranks on Google. You can also take the help of the Google Keyword Planner to generate long keyword phrases which generate high volume and low/medium competition. A SEO company or any part of the world can help you generate targeted amount of traffic.

Using the Power of Influencers

Influencers or famous people who have carved a niche for themselves in your target market can help you in increasing the popularity of your blog tremendously. Influencers have a large fan following and have a myriad of supporters over various platforms on social media. Make them write for you so that they become a contributor to your blog.

By making them participate in your blog related activities will set the ball rolling for you in striking the right chord. They bring along with them a powerful distribution network. Requesting them to mention your blog on their posts, sharing your posts on their social media accounts will definitely get you noticed.

Complete your Meta description and h1 Tags

The keyword you are targeting should be present in your title, URL and description as well. From the SEO perspective, it is a great idea to insert your keywords in the meta description as well as H1 and H2 headings. Meta description is a sentence which describes your blog post briefly.

Uploading Speed of your Blog

Google has repeatedly declared that the uploading speed of any website is one of the major criteria for getting high rankings on Google. It applies to your blog too. In case your blog uploads too slowly and doesn’t come up fast enough, they will not even visit your website. Instead they will hit the back button and go on to the next Google result. Make sure the blog is optimized for mobile devices.

It doesn’t matter whether it is a Website designing company or elsewhere, website uploading speed is a significant criteria. In case you would want to test the speed of your website, you can go to Google Insights and find out the present loading speed of the blog. By getting a score out of 10, you will be able to find out how fast is your loading speed.

Will Your Business Benefit From a Blog?

Blogging has been around for quite some time now. It is rapidly becoming the another alternative for getting news. It has evolved from being a venue for ranting and raving about a subject or sharing personal goings on to a tool used by business to share information with employees or customers to replace the newsletters.

If you are considering a blog for internal company communications, then think about what you want the blog to represent and the type of information you want to share. Plan your blog before you being to investigate tools to use for it or assigning someone to maintain it. Otherwise you may select the wrong tool and have the maintenance person using too much time on a “part-time” assignment. Also, if the blog is to replace a current company newsletter in print or via email, you better do a poll to make sure the employees are willing to check the web rather than have paper they can read at break or direct delivery to their desk via email. If no one is willing to go to the blog to get the information, it is a waste of time and money to build a blog.

If you are considering a blog for external communication, typically to existing or potential customers but you could include suppliers too, then you need to consider the information to be shared as well as your presentation. Should the blog have a consistent look with your other brand and marketing tools? Should it be part of your website or stand-alone from it? Is it mainly a marketing tool, a training program, for information sharing, or some combination? Who will provide the articles/posts for the blog and how often? If you plan to use the blog to replace a newsletter, how will the current readers know when the blog is updated? Will you send an email to notify them of updates or just inform them of your planned frequency of post so they can check for themselves? Will you use Twitter or another social network to communicate your blog as a part of your marketing campaign?

If you are a small company or independent consultant considering a blog, do you really need one? Perhaps it might be better to partner with another consultant or company to share responsibility for a blog that would benefit both of you. If you want to write primarily to share information, but do not want to build your own blog, consider guest posting on an independent blog that already exists which provides posts with the type of information you wish to share. You can review the candidate blog to see if they have more than one person doing their writing. If they do, look for a contact and send an email suggesting your topic and asking if they would like a guest article or post done by you. This saves you time in building a blog and searching for an audience. This will build your confidence in your ability to provide data for the blog in case you decide later you need your own blog, and then you will already be prepared for the hardest part of blogging.

Before you build a blog, ask the questions above for the type of blog you are considering. Then decide if your company really needs a blog.

Why Every Business Needs a Blog

If you have just started to look at the internet as a means of promoting your business, chances are you have been focusing on your website. While websites are the cornerstone of online business however, they are not the only essential, and if you really want to boost your business online, you should also be focusing on a blog.

If you are worried that a blog sounds technical or difficult, don’t be! The word ‘blog’ is actually a shortened version of the term ‘web log.’ They were originally used a little bit like online diaries, where people could post information about their daily lives, but these days, blogs are big business!

Unlike your website, which usually remains at least partially static – with the same information on it all the time – your blog is something that is easy to update. Whenever you have news, reviews, product information, or special offers to relate to your customers, for instance, you can simply log in, and post it, without having to do a complete redesign of your website!

Blogs can also be free standing, using a blogging platform, or they can be integrated into your website itself, by adding a blog page to your site. Either way, however, they fulfill several important functions.

Firstly, they keep your customers and site visitors up to date with the comings and goings of your business. If you add what’s known as an RSS feed to your blog, those news items can even be delivered directly into your clients and visitors email inboxes.

Secondly, they make sure that the content on your site is regularly updated, and that it stays fresh and relevant. This is one of the key factors that search engines use when ranking websites, and as the saying goes ‘content is king.’ So if your website does not change often, your site could be suffering in terms of page rank, and a blog could be the solution to that problem.

Third, there’s the opportunity to have a more personal form of contact with the people who visit your site. While websites are typically written in a very business like style, blogs are usually more informal, and it’s a great way to add a little bit more of your personality to your site.

Finally, they are a means to generate additional revenue on your site. In most cases, blogging platforms allow you to integrate third party advertising links to your blog, which will pay you every time someone clicks on them. There are also other options, like in text ads, or even platforms that work as third party advertising networks, putting bloggers in touch with advertisers who would like their products mentioned in blog posts.

Essentially, blogs are a means for on and offline business owners to have much more dynamic content and information on their sites that they can update quickly and easily on a daily basis, and that will boost their search engine rankings, by increasing their keyword density on their site, and their unique content.

They’re also a separate earning mechanism for many business owners, as well as a means to inject a little personality into an otherwise bland website.

The good news is that getting a blog is not difficult or time consuming at all. There are plenty of free blogging platforms, like WordPress and Blogger, that you can use to set up a free blog, and you can easily link to them from your main site. Blog platforms are also very user friendly, and even people with only a rudimentary level of technical knowledge about the internet can use them to create posts, run advertising and set up RSS feeds.

It’s interesting to note that these days; many online businesses choose a blog as their primary online presence, rather than using a traditional website. That’s because blogs are much easier to create and manage for the ordinary person, and their informal style tends to attract a wider audience. Some well-known blogs, in fact, earn their owners hundreds of thousands of dollars every month!

If you don’t have the time to manage your own blog, there are even freelancers out there who, for a fee, will create, manage, and add content to your blog daily or weekly, so it’s entirely possible to automate the process completely.

In fact, these days, having a blog is almost as important as having a website and its well worth the effort for any business owner who is using the internet for a part or all of their marketing plan to start blogging sooner, rather than later. It’s easy, informal, and usually free to start a blog, so there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be using it as a part of your online marketing efforts!

Blog Vs Social Network – Advantages And Disadvantages

In most instances, the Internet marketing campaigns of companies are anchored on blog and social media marketing interventions. Of course, we would always seize every opportunity to improve our marketing programs, and this is the main reason why we see companies undertake marketing strategies anchored on these 2 popular platforms.

However, business owners and stakeholders would want to determine the incremental contribution and impact of the blog marketing and social network marketing interventions so that they can make a more appropriate strategic decision.

The Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing

Marketing programs and activities that are geared towards popular social networking sites provide opportunities for companies to reach out to segments of the market which are not normally accessed through traditional marketing techniques. The social interaction aspect opens a lot of opportunities and present business prospects which may not be available through traditional marketing medium.

Internet marketers can also tap Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to build brand loyalty. These social interaction platforms also create an ideal environment for companies to project their corporate image and generate goodwill. In this way, you can bring the marketing activity down to a more personal level.

However, you also have to take into account the major challenges which are associated to social media marketing. Generally, marketing efforts that are geared towards social media have longer gestation period. You may have to wait for a longer period of time before you can see significant positive results. It is also an aspect of Internet marketing which will demand much of your time and resources.

The Pros and Cons of Using Blogs for Internet Marketing

Blogs are effective marketing tools for companies in “selling” ideas and solutions. Effective marketing highlights the need for us to generate the “pull” by focusing on information and solution instead of the products or services. Those online journal entries offer some of the best opportunities for you to turn readers into strong believers.

Blogs can also be used by company owners and managers as an effective feedback mechanism. It is where you give your growing customer base the opportunity for them to ventilate their issues, concerns and preferences. From the perspective of the Internet marketer, this unique setup provides a great way for them to get into the minds of their target clients and learn more about their preferences and expectations.

However, you must also take cognizance of the downsides or challenges of blogging. It is a permanent commitment and in order to obtain the optimum results, you need to allocate a significant amount of your time and resources to generate quality content for your readers and target audience.

Of course, it is also one aspect of Internet marketing that you must closely manage and control. Blogging opens the company to possible profanity and personal attacks. Your competitors may also use this medium in order to peddle damaging information or acts which might undermine the interest of your company.