How You Can Make a Career Out of Blogging

Do you have a passion for writing? Do you have lots of spare time on your hands? Whether you are a student, stay-at-home mom, fully employed, part-time or completely unemployed, you will certainly be able to put your personality, ideas and free time to good use… all thanks to the wonderful world of blogging!

While a lot of people have made use of this online phenomenon to rant about their lives or talk about the little things that happened in their day, there are actually people – lots of them – who have been making use of blogging as more of a marketing tool rather than just a way to express themselves. Do you want to find out how you can get in on this cash-earning trend? Here are tips to get you started:

Tip #1: Know Your Passion and Use It!

If you are an avid follower of fashion trends, then the best kind of blog that you can come up with is of course, a fashion blog. When you are going to start a blog, one that you will also be using for work, make sure that you will be able to churn out witty write-ups that will give people the impression that you are highly knowledgeable about the subject (even if this isn’t entirely true). Of course, there would be similar blogs up your alley… but if people will see that you really know your stuff through your creative use of words, then you surely would not have a hard time convincing them that your blog is the one which they should keep coming back to.

Tip #2: Keep Things Fresh

Once you are able to establish a niche market for your blog, the next thing that you should definitely do is to make sure that you will be able to keep your audience’s interest. While you may be good at writing and you are very knowledgeable about the topics that you are discussing in your blog, you should still find a way to keep things fun, exciting, and new. Be mindful that there are a lot of different blogs out there fighting for attention; make sure that you always stay ahead of the pack. I write as the “Net Fool” to keep things a bit off the wall… At any rate, once you have a steady flow of traffic coming in to your blog, that is when the money will start rolling in.

Tip#3: Know The Two Kinds of Blogs

There are actually two kinds of professional blogs out there. Early on in your blogging career, you need to establish which one your blog going to be. First up are the bloggers who are being paid to blog. This is probably best suited for people who are just good at writing, those who have the skill but do not really have any intention of making a career out of it. Bloggers who are being paid to write usually have a set of topics that their clients will pay them to write about. One need not be passionate about it, the important thing is to just do it. The second kind of professional blogger are those who start a blog hoping to attract clients to advertise on their blog – for a fee of course. This kind of blog is fueled more on how passionate the writer is about the topics he/she is writing about. Of course, when one is passionate about something, it just follows that he or she will also be working hard to maintain it and be good at it.

Tip#4: Think of Innovative Money Making Extras

Aside from being paid to blog, another great way to make your blog earn more money is by putting advertisements or affiliate offers on your site. While there are clients who will pay good money just to have their advertisements on a popular site, there are also those commission-based web advertisements where you will get paid depending on how many people click on the ads from your blog.

Tip#5: Offer Special Services

Direct this to clients, be confident about your work and surely more people will get enticed into hiring you for possible blogging jobs. Put your e-mail on your blog just in case there are people who will be interested to ask you to write for them in your blog, it depends on you on how much you want to charge them of course. Keep your network strong and your viewers will stay with you. You can use your network as leverage farther down the road to tap into even more profits as a blogger!

INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET TRAFFIC

IT'S LIKE WATER

Think of what we know about early humans and how they migrated and settled. Water is a basic human need. If early man did not live close to water, then he had to bargain for it from others who transported the water into his area. People who did not live close to water had to have several vessels to store what water they could get their hands on. The consequence was that people who settled far from any river or stream had to spend a great deal of their time and resources trying to obtain and store water -- and they never really had more than just enough to get by. On the other hand, people who settled near a large river or stream could freely dip out all the water they needed in abundance. When it came to water, positioning was everything. Any map will show that large successful settlements are usually close to free flowing water.

Analogies have been made between money and water. It has been suggested that if you position yourself where money freely flows, you will obtain a lot more of it with less effort than if you position yourself in some remote location relative to the "money stream". The analogy to water is equally useful when applied to Internet traffic.

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ANALYZING INTERNET TRAFFIC

MARKETING FORCES IN HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

Similar to how the forces of nature and history determined where rivers flow across the earth's surface, the history and forces of the Internet have shaped how Internet traffic flows across the wires and ether. For the most part, people make their initial connection to Cyberspace in one of two fashions: they either dial in from home or work, or they connect through a network at work. In order to do this, they have to have software that creates a TCP/IP socket. To view the World Wide Web, they also need software called an Internet browser. That socket and that browser are the first opportunities for anyone to get their attention in Cyberspace. Some socket software allows for ads to be shown as the Internet connection is established.

Browsers have three features that control Internet traffic. Those three features are "Home Page", "Favorites" or "Bookmarks," and "History." The Home Page is all important. That is the first page you see when you open your browser. You see this page over and over on a daily basis. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) provide their subscribers software which sets the ISP's page as the subscribers' home page and even sets some of their favorites. Even though many subscribers may eventually change their home page, ISPs, by their very nature, have a natural tap into much of the Internet's traffic. ISPs that provide an expansive and encyclopedic digital environment along with their access, such as AOL, really have a tap into the traffic. Software companies that make browsers (and there are really only two players here - Microsoft and Netscape) can have pre-set bookmarks and favorites. Operating systems can control consumers' choices of an ISP by having software built into the operating system. (Sometimes it seems like there is a battle for your attention going on inside your computer when various software packages pop up and ask to be made the "default" software.) The fairness of this type of competition has been the subject of a major antitrust action by the Justice Department against Microsoft.

The History feature of a browser, on the other hand, just makes it more likely that you will return to a page once you have been there before. This, in addition to the other features, makes it more likely that pages with traffic will gain even more traffic.

Other types of software-based online marketing include software that resides on your screen independent of a Web browser and displays ads while you surf. You are paid or otherwise rewarded for the time you spend using this software. An example is AllAdvantage.

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THE ROLE OF CONSUMER CHOICE

Once a user gets beyond these built-in features vying for his or her attention, it becomes more a matter of choice. The Internet user can type in a URL and go to Web pages that have come to the user's attention through word of mouth or some other media. From there, the user is likely to follow links to other similar pages. As memories may fail, typing errors may occur and links may be outdated; this process only takes the user so far. The next thing a user looks for on the Web is a way to directly find things of interest to him or her. Search engines fulfill that function and have been the most popular sites on the Web. Yahoo! was the original Web search engine and thus, by mere force of history, has been one of the most popular site on the Web. As a general rule, search engines and the large digital environments of the media companies (such as AOL, Go.com, MSNBC, etc.) maintain the top traffic rankings. Because search engines exist, the choice and interests of the user are a strong factor, dispersing Internet traffic according to demographics. That is, unlike the traditional broadcast media, traffic branches off to different sites according to people's interests.

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UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE

Put yourself in the position of the persons you are trying to recruit. Think from their perspective rather than your own. This, of course, is excellent advice! People on the Web are looking for content. They seek information applicable to themselves. To be a successful Internet marketer, you must take time to think about how people use the Internet.

When staring at their Web browser, people have these choices: They can type in a URL that someone told them about, they can read their home page and follow links from it, they can look at a page in their history or in their favorites, they can go to one of the very popular sites and follow links, or they can go to a search engine and follow links or compose a search phrase.

In order to be the target of a link or be listed in a search engine, you must have a Web presence.

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TWO IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES FOR YOUR WEB PRESENCE: VALUE AND FLOW

The first principle illuminating how people use the Web is that it takes value for a Website to be "sticky." A 1998 article in Science magazine stated that Web surfers are constantly making a judgment about continuing to visit a Website or exiting the site. Two factors come into play: the value of the current page and the promise of value in future site pages. That is, even if the current page has a low perceived value, if there is an indication that the quality of pages may improve, users will stay on the site for another page or two more. But if there is no value, they will leave the site very quickly. This is why we hear so often that "content is king." When they leave for lack of value, they are never coming back.

The second principle is that there must be a balance between the difficulty of using a Website and the rewards the user obtains from the Website. The term "flow" has been used to describe what occurs when a user loses himself in a Website. Flow occurs when the user becomes so absorbed that time and task temporarily become unimportant. Whatever the user started out to do online gets temporarily forgotten while they enjoy your site. When flow occurs, direction, inhibitions, and caution give way to impulse, and the user is much more likely to join or buy something promoted on the site. The site must be both interesting and easy to navigate for this to occur.

Flow is also a concept that applies to movement from one Website to another. Banners or textual links must be in context and create a smooth transition from one site to another to be effective. Otherwise, the flow is broken and interest is lost.

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TRAFFIC BUILDING

Once you have planned a Website that has value and creates flow, you need to direct traffic to your site. The four important goals of traffic building are: 1) obtaining the right domain name, 2) obtaining good publicity, 3) obtaining an effective portal presence, and 4) utilizing and maintaining flow in the placement of your Internet ads. Ads, of course, can be free, exchanged, or paid. All of these will be discussed in detail in future lessons.

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CONCLUSION

To be an effective Internet marketer, you need to analyze and understand Internet traffic and, very importantly, you must understand that the "traffic" consists of human beings with feelings and interests and desires. You must understand that they are looking for what they want to find - not what you want them to find. You must understand that they will get there through their methods - not the methods you may prefer for them to use. The old broadcast media methods of controlling attention do not work so well on the Internet. It's a new game. You must use valuable content and ease of use to create flow. You must properly position your site within the flow of Internet traffic. Once you get this right (and you will), you are on the road to becoming a very successful Internet entrepreneur.

CHOOSE YOUR BLOG TOPIC

There’s a lot of advice out there regarding how to choose a topic to blog about. Some will tell you to focus on profitability. Find the niches that people spend money in and that are currently not serviced well by other blogs.

Others will tell you that it doesn’t matter about the money, it’s all about how much you care about the topic. If you focus on passion, things you personally enjoy and know about, creating good content will be easy and your motivation will be strong.

I don't have specific advice on whether either methodology is better. If anything, I suggest you consider both aspects, with a slight emphasis on choosing a topic you care about over the potential to make money from it.

People are very different. Some remain motivated because of the process, not the topic, and these people could run a blog about a topic they don’t really care about because the process of profiting from it keeps them going.

This typifies the mesh in professional blogging between writing for writing’s sake vs. writing for income. It’s not black and white and all you can do is what works for you and you feel comfortable with.

Consistency is such a key component of successful blogging that I advise people to forget about profits for the first few months – even six months if necessary – and focus on giving value. This reasoning suggests you choose a topic that you personally could sit down and write something about every day without reward (that’s a good question to ask yourself – can you write every day on the topic you are considering to blog about?).

On the flip side, you don’t want to blog for 12 months only to earn a few pennies a day. It’s important to, at the very least, consider the type of reader you are attracting, whether they buy things, whether you can sell them things, or find sponsors who would pay to advertise to your readers.

I’m inclined to believe that as long as you have some traffic, you can earn some money, but if you do this strategically and prepare in advance, a little research can help to avoid wasting time. As much as it feels great to build an audience, we are also here to make money, and it won’t feel great if you can’t effectively monetize your audience.

The key is to understand your reader, their motivations, passions and spending habits. If you love the topic you blog about, you are in a much better position to understand your reader because you are part of the same niche. You know what you like, what you buy, and therefore what your readers enjoy and purchase.

If you are a good marketer you don’t have to be a fan of the market to actually understand it, but for most people I suggest you gravitate to topics you enjoy. It will make two key areas of successful blogging – content creation and monetization – that much easier if you have an inherent insight into your topic and audience.

HOW BLOG MAKE MONEY

Print magazines make money by selling advertising. The larger their circulation, the more influence they exert over people, and the demographics of their readers dictate how much money they make.

Blogs are essentially the same. The more traffic (circulation) you have, the type and quality of that traffic (reader demographics) and the influence you have over your audience, determines your profitability.

This is why bloggers are obsessed with building traffic. It really doesn’t matter how you make money – it might be a contextual ad program like Google AdSense, affiliate marketing or direct ad sales – the more raw readers you have, generally, the more money you can make.
Quality of traffic plays an important part too. If you have a strong influence over your readers, when you ask them to do something, such as recommending they buy a product you promote as an affiliate, more of them will do so.

If you break down the process of blog monetization, the following events occur:

1. A person (blogger) creates a web destination point (blog) that people want to visit, possibly on a repeat basis, because of the value it offers. Initially they find the blog by following a link from another blog or website, through a referral from friends or colleagues, or they come across the blog when it appears in the results of a search-engine query.

2. A proportion of that audience is funneled on to other sites that “pay” to buy the traffic.
Payment might be in the form of a per-click fee, a monthly rate, an affiliate commission, or profit on a product or service sale.

The blogger works to attract attention and then sells that attention to advertisers for a fee or uses the attention to profit from their own product and/or service sales.

The key variable here is “attention”. Attention is traffic, influence and the potential to make money from blogging.

So how does a blogger attract attention?

Two Key Ingredients For Attracting Attention

The first part of creating attention (traffic) to a blog, is the age-old advice you will have read over and over again if you study successful blogging:

“Write good content”

So yes, the foundation of a great blog is good content. Where people go wrong is deciding what good content is, given their goals (usually the error is made when determining exactly what the goals are and what strategies will be used to meet the goals) and assuming that just good content is enough.

The other key ingredient is marketing.

Did I mention that all professional bloggers need to have business skills? Yep, that’s right, marketing – the fine art of attracting attention and THE key component for successful business – is a paramount ingredient for successful blogging. It’s through marketing that people find your good content.

I’ll discuss how to market a blog in a moment, but first we have to make sure you avoid the first error I mentioned – not having a strategy in place for producing the right type of good content given your goals.

MAKE MONEY FROM BLOG

http://www.adrianblog.com/

We sometimes wondering and won't believe that others can make money from Internet. When talking about making money program from internet our mind always though that it is Scam! Negative thinking always haunting our mind.

I'm not talking about the investment program like Swiss Cash, MLM, Pyramid Get Rich Quick Scheme or Affiliate marketing. What I'm talking about is how you can make money with just write articles everyday, viewing others blog, make comments on others blog, loading pictures to your blog, make your blog more attractive everyday.

Please do not jump to conclusion, I'm still not finish yet. This is easiest thing to do:

1st step

I rather want to talk about anything straight to the point. First you need to open an email, then you need to create your own blog, add Adsense program to your blog.

What is Adsense?

Google Adsense in short is an advertising partnership between a website owner and google.
All you have to do is sign up with adsense and make a blog about something you know enough about, then you add the adsense program to your blog, which makes google ads appear on you site (like on mine on the right and bottom).

Now how you make money is everytime a person goes on your site you earn a little bit of money and every time somebody clicks on an ad on your site you earn a little more money.
Depending on how popular your website is you will make more money.