Yes! There is serious money in blogging but it’s not like picking fruit from a tree. You have to work with and around the system before you can see profits rolling in. Most important to know is what to avoid doing so you don’t waste time. The ways to make money blogging can come from affiliate marketing, ads, and subscriptions. The ways to avoid missing the boat is by not doing the following fatal errors on your blog:

• If you will start email marketing your blog, don’t be the kind of guy who hard sells. This is the kind of email that just persists too much, cajoles and tries to bully readers into action, and stops at nothing in sending out emails.
• Unless you really want to only attract your kind, avoid too much technical terminology and content without the corresponding explanation.
• Don’t de-segment your blog too much that it becomes confusing to look at
• Not allowing anyone to comment on your blog is one way to turn off your visitors

When does the money start coming in?

Profits from blogging will start as a trickle and can stay that way for a while. Don’t be discouraged about this. Not everyone will be an instant hit. You could try going viral with a video to stimulate traffic to your blog. However, before you do that, make sure your website is ready with the buttons and clicks that would generate income. Test everything on your blog yourself several times. Know how the payment system works and common troubleshooting solutions. Some blogs take as long as a year before it kicks in while others get going almost immediately. Those that succeed quickly usually already have an online presence.

Money-Making Blogs

Don’t sign up with just any affiliate product. It has to make sense and be relevant to your blog. For instance, let’s say that you have decided to focus on a dog blog. Well, you certainly wouldn’t promote items for cats on your blog. Instead, you would include dog bedding, dog food and snacks, dog collars and leashes,  and other similar items for your readers.  Instead, If you plan on selling ad space, put together a presentation on why it would benefit to advertise on your blog.  You could reel in the clients with freebies like a free week and a swap deal.

Planning on turning your blog into a business venture means discipline and more focus than a casual blog. Keep updated since the internet is constantly evolving and new money-making ideas are being introduced regularly.

As a writer, it’s essential for you to realize that you have a potential gold mine in your hands and mind. Many writers have successfully managed to increase their revenue streams in writing by attacking other writing modes. From being a blogger, you can try your hand at copywriting or sales. You don’t even have to stick to writing but use your skill as a stepping stone to being accomplished in other aspects like editing or running a pool of writers.

Whether you are a home worker, traveling writer, or part time writer with a full time job, there are many options to diversify. Using the computer and internet, there are jobs or contracts you can find. You will need to build up your reputation, so if you have a blog continue working on it. However, turn your blog into something less casual and geared more for snagging contracts and showing off your writing skills.

The blog can also be used as a jumping board to starting and managing blogs for other people. There are still many professionals who have no idea how a website or blog is set-up. Neither do they have the time to study and build one up. You could be their point man and run it as part of your business portfolio.

Diversify also by being a sales person if you have the skill and talent for convincing strangers to buy what you’re selling. It’s an art form to be able to sell and it pays huge dividends if you sign up with the right Multi Level Marketing (MLM) or affiliate group. Pick one that has a good support system with training, a refined commission structure and a reputable name. There are too many companies out there that do not pay the right commission rates or withhold the commission for unreasonable periods.

One last note that you should heed is that diversifying your skills is a long-drawn out process. One way you can hasten your spread is by consulting an expert or signing up with an outsourcing website. Naturally, there will be service fees to pay so just read and fully understand the agreement with the outsourcing website before you commit your time.

What’s in a blog that makes it more popular than others? Why are some people enjoying so much attention with their blogs while others are struggling to get even a few readers? Although blogs must be well written, contain correct grammar and appeal to their targeted audience, one must do a bit more to make your blog popular.  Here are the other elements that separate a hot blog from a not-so-hot one.

1. Popular Blogs are Unique. If you really want to have a popular blog, it has to be unique. What do you have that draws attention to your blog? Is it a unique design? Usually, great blogs start with an incredible tagline and cool visuals. This means it has to appeal to the senses and look fantastic. Blogs that have no color or design will be rejected by the reader right away. Not only will they bore the reader but they’ll put them to sleep too.  So, dress up you site – add a bit of creativity and finesse! For instance, Kevin, a reader and owner of the popular site Kevinfrank.ca has done a nice job with his Vancouver realtors blog. Although his blog is incorporated within his site, it is visually appealing and very well done. The blog content is informative, search engine optimized, and very well written. In fact, his tagline “Bringing Families Home” is spot on for an established realtor!  Kudos to Kevin’s firm and hope he sells all his gorgeous homes and condos for sale Vancouver.
2. Pay attention to your titles.  Many people don’t realize this but there is weight in titles and you should use this to invite people to read your blog. Stay away from boring, run-of-the-mill kind of titles. However, don’t use a title and not deliver with the contents that have nothing to do with the title.
3. Keep readers wanting more. Your content should keep the reader wanting more. Think TV series – why is the audience willing to wait 7 days to see the next episode, and why sit through one hour in front of the TV? They’re feeling the grip of the story and characters and it keeps them 100% engrossed. Your blog should try to achieve this effect with content. It’s what will make your readers want to come back for more.
4. Spice up your content with pictures or graphics. You can even using shading as long as it does not interrupt the flow of words or overshadow text. Keep your paragraphs short and your sentences simple. Unless your target audience is geniuses that appreciate the use of complex terms, avoid using unfamiliar words. That is, unless it is to emphasize a point and the definition is provided.
5. Be trendy. Talk about the world and what’s happening. Even for personal blogs it can get tiresome if you keep talking about “Me, I, and Mine.”But you can give an opinion and solicit feedback or response from your readers. Engage them in a thread. This is one way you get to know who’s reading you and use this information to proceed in the same direction or make adjustments to your blog to get the kind of readers you want. For instance, our friends at the Locksmith Spot are not only a directory for locksmiths but they are bloggers that cover great trending topics. For instance, their current blog post “the Age of Keyless Locks” recently discussed keyless locks that are very trendy right now. In fact, many individuals have switched their traditional locks for these clever devices because they are safer and harder to pick than traditional locks.  Kudos to the Locksmith Spot for their trendy posts.
6. Make it a habit to submit blog posts at least twice a week. The attention span for readers and fans is a small window because there’s a lot of competition so you need to keep writing your blogs regularly so your blog becomes a habit

Finally, you need that all-important key known as marketing. There are different approaches that can be used, some at the same time. One easy way is by using keywords in your blog. This helps bring in traffic if your blog shows up in a search engine because of your choice of keyword. Now, get out there and make that blog popular – you can do it!

As you probably know, Google updates site page rank (PR) every 4 months or so and the last update occurred on April 2nd. With each passing day, everyone (including me) is anxiously waiting for the PR to increase. Now, before you get all frustrated, you must remember that Google is Google and they are never ever typical. They are like a physician in a busy doctor’s office, they like to keep you waiting. So, instead of getting depressed that your page rank won’t update there are some things you can do about it. Ready?

1. Stop stressing and strike back. For every day that you don’t get a PR update, make it a point to get 5-10 quality backlinks so that you can show Google that you don’t really care about their Pagerank ranking system.

2. Focus on increasing your Alexa ranking instead. After all, with a better Alexa rank, you’l most likely see a PR increase anyway so you can’t go wrong.

3. Google “Why My PR won’t change or Why Google doesn’t like my great site” and then write post after post complaining about how frustrated you are about Google, how you can’t stand them and how you wish they would get their act together. By doing this, you’ll feel better and if you only choose do-follow sites, with higher PR than you have, you could actually increase your backlinks and ummm your ranking too.

4. Bookmark PR checker sites. Visit sites like Google Page Rank Update and check them every 10 minutes to see if your PR has been updated.

5. Stare at the Google PR and will it with your mind to change, change, change. If you can’t bear to see that PR move, you can always go on strike and start using Bing until Google updates your PR.

As for me, I plan on doing 1, 2,3, 4 and 5 (in that order) until I see some Google love or upward movement in my rankings. What about you?

When I first started setting up websites I honestly didn’t even think about the importance of PR. I simply built some quality sites, did a bit of article marketing and hoped for the best. It wasn’t until I got deep into internet marketing that I realized how very important PR is and how it really does matter. Ever so often, I get a few emails from newbies about the importance of PR and whether or not it really matters. Well, this post will attempt to explain this issue a bit more.

Basically Google ranks websites from 1 to 10, with a PR10 being the best. Very few sites are rated a 9 or 10, and one example is Wikipedia. Now, the reason Wikipedia has such a high rating is because they are considered an ‘authority’ site. They have many incoming links from high-quality sites, especially in comparison with the number of links going out. This makes the site more important in the eyes of Google, and with high-quality content and keywords, the PR can really rise.

Many people aren’t sure whether it matters, but when you’re considering offering spots for advertising, it does matter. People will take a good look at your Google PageRank before determining whether they want to place an ad on your site. The higher your page rank is, the more advertisers you’ll have lined up to place an ad on your site. For instance, if you have steady traffic, good PR and a decent Alexa score you can make money from ad sites like backlinks.com, buysellads.com and more.

Sound good? Well, there are many ways to increase your page rank, including:
- Obtaining more links back to your site, especially from high page ranks. It’s even better if there aren’t that many outbound links on your site.

- Using high-quality content that is relevant to your site’s theme. Strategically placed keywords can help as well, but too many keywords are a bad idea and will be classified as keyword stuffing.

- Provide valuable information for viewers, allowing them to be able to link to your site in confidence.

By increasing your Google PageRank, you can gain more advertisers willing to pay for spots on your website, enabling you to make more money and increase your income streams. Check out how to automatically increase your PageRank now.

As you guys know, I’m always trying out new ways to monetize my niche sites. One great way to monetize sites is to sell ads. Keep in mind however, that your PR could drop if you decide to go this route however if you are more concerned with lining your pocketbooks with cold-hard cash, you probably don’t care anyway. Here are the 3 best ad selling sites that marketing writers use to monetize their sites.

www.buysellads.com

This is one of the best marketplaces for selling ads. It’s one of the most established, and there is a huge network of both buyers and sellers that frequent this website. In fact, there are more than 2,000 quality advertisers that use this website to find websites or blogs to publish their ads on. You must get your website or blog approved with this website, but that’s something you’ll have to do with most ad selling sites. They tend to have stringent standards and typically only accept sites with a PR of 3 or more and also seem concerned with Alexa scores too.

www.TextLinkAds.com

This is another of the best ad selling sites. There are already more than 40,000 publishers who are members of this site and for good reason. You can receive 50% of the money that is made when your ads are successful. You’re paid each month on the 1st of the month through PayPal, and you don’t have to pay any fees for the money you get paid. One of the benefits of the ads from this site is that they can increase your search engine ranking because they’re text-based. This site also has stringent standards and seems to approve sites with a PR of 2 or more and lower Alexa scores.

www.adknowledge.com

This site offers publishers the ability to sell different types of ad space, from text link ads to graphics and even banners. More than 50,000 advertisers use this website to sell ads, including companies like Virgin, The New York Times, eHarmony, and more. This site has a lot of flexibility but it is also a site that must approve your blog or website before you can publish ads. I haven’t actually used this one but it does get a lot of hoopla on a lot of forums that I visit and may be worth checking out.

Well, there you have it – the top 3 ad selling sites that you can use to increase your moola. Try them out – you just might like the money they make you!

Well, its the first of the month and I’m very excited that a new month is starting. Although I’m thankful that I reached my goal of $135 per day in online income, I’m a little bummed that I had to take on more active income jobs to get there. This month, I’ll attempt to earn $150 a day and to do this, I’m going to keep marketing my winners and will either flip or put text link ads on those sites that aren’t performing well. So, today’s blog post will discuss the pros and cons of selling text link ads.

Now, why Text Lilnk Ads? Well, Text Link Ads is a huge marketplace where bloggers and website owners can sell ads for their website. Apparently ad publishers make bids for text link ads on your website and you have the opportunity to approve or deny the ads. Here are the pros and cons of this revenue generation model.

Pros of Text Link Ads

One of the most beneficial things about text link ads is that they appear as typical links within the text that goes out to advertisers. This is very non-intrusive, so your guests aren’t irritated with a lot of picture-based or changing ads that are distracting. If a visitor is interested in a particular thing, they can click on the ad quickly and visit the sponsoring site.

Another thing that is quite advantageous for bloggers and website owners is that most ads are automatically renewed. If an ad does well on your site, you’ll probably keep the advertiser for quite some time. You will receive 50% of the income made on the ad placed on your website or blog.

Cons of Text Link Ads

There are a few different cons to this kind of advertising, especially if your site is small. It takes a site with many visitors and a lot of keyword traffic to get approved for Text Link Ads. Even then, it can be difficult to find advertisers unless you have a very specific niche or your site is the dominant site in a niche. The more general your niche, the harder it can be to find an advertiser. For instance, if your site’s main keyword and niche is ‘losing weight,’ it will be quite difficult to gain advertisers because this is such a popular niche and there are so many publishers.

Overall, text link ads can certainly benefit you if your site is well-known and is in a different niche than the majority of others. I plan to use it on those niche sites that have little PR or the ones that I don’t really care whether the PR drops anyway.

What do you think? Are you using Text link ads? Are they beneficial or do they do more harm than good?

Ever since I wrote this post on autoblogging, I’ve been getting a ton of emails and skype questions about autoblogging and thought I’d better clarify a few things here. Autoblogging is a term for setting your blog so that you don’t have to manually maintain it. Some individuals use plug-ins for WordPress which allow the blog to scoop posts from different sources, so that there is fresh content on the blog daily or even several times a day. And, although it sounds like a great “hands off way” to blog, there are some benefits and disadvantages to this method as you’ll see below.

Pros of Autoblogging

Creating your blogs so that they pull information from different websites or other blogs is fairly easy to do. The true benefit is that you always have fresh content related to your keywords or your niche. Some individuals use Unique Article Wizard, a site that allows you to use their articles, most of which are fairly good quality.

There is little to no maintenance involved with autoblogs, so any income you’re making is passive. Most individuals use Google ads and affiliate links to make money. If you choose to post your own unique content once in a while, you can make the blog even stronger. However, although there are a lot of advantages, there are also disadvantages.

Cons of Autoblogging

It’s really important to find a good plug-in to pull content, and ensure that there are links back to the original site. If you’re getting content from other peoples’ websites or blogs without linking back and giving credit, you could really upset those people. Even worse, there is the possibility that you could be sued.

Another disadvantage is that there are so many variables. What if Google changes their ranking algorithm and decides that they will no longer support autoblogs. What is they penalize individuals with autoblogs by unranking them. If this is the case, you could be left with zero online income virtually overnight. Unfortunately, this has happened to many people, and can easily happen if you’re not careful. Another possibility is that the keywords change or your niche is suddenly not as important anymore.

Although there are pros and cons to every situation, it’s important to look closely before determining whether autoblogging is the correct route for you to take. I personally am not a fan of autoblogs UNLESS you plan to flip them. I’ve been toying around with the idea of doing that but keeping them within my collection, probably not – but that’s just my opinion!

So, today is Monday and it is the beginning of the week for this internet marketing writer and there are so many things that I want to accomplish this month but I just realized that I don’t have much time. Now, typically I would go into panic mode and start doing a bunch of stuff to increase my revenues but this week, I’ve decided to stay focused on my goals. That is, although I would love to write a bunch of DS articles to make some extra cash or bid on a bunch of Elance projects to make some more money, I am gong to resist the temptation. Instead, I am going to focus on increasing my residual income. As you know, I have quite a bit of blogger blogs that haven’t made any money and my new goal is to make each one make at least $10+ a month. Now, mind you that $10 each is NOT a lot of money and I’m totally open to them making more but when you have 31 of these blogs and each one earns you $10.00 a month then you have $380.00 extra a month to add to the pot and that, my friend, starts looking much better, right? Well, it most certainly does to me!

Now, how am I going to increase the revenue of each blog to $10 a month? I am going to market those blogs like crazy. I am going to build quality links on higher PR sites and blogs, use Yahoo Answers to drive traffic, and write and submit articles to article directories. By doing this, I should skyrocket my search engine rankings and move up the ranks so that more people see my blogs and purchase my products or generate ad revenue for me. Well, gotta get to work so that I can put my plan into action.

If you’re considering blogging for today.com so that you can take advantage of the $1.00 per 100 word post deal, perhaps you should rethink your options. I have been blogging on today.com for over 2 months now and as a freelance writer and marketing consultant, I always keep my ears to the grapevine when it comes to my money.

Apparently, there are some major changes going on at today.com that could significantly impact my moola. Well, here’s what I found out. Not only does the owner expect you to bring in 1000 impressions a day to remain in good standing to receive the $1.00 paid per post per day deal but they are well in their rights to change the terms of agreement as they sit fit. In fact, they can change the payment structure midstream as you are only guaranteed the $1.00 per post for the first month only.

As a business owner myself, I understand the importance of making a profit but I also believe in treating your employees and contractors with respect and honor and not changing their payment streams midstream. In the forums, the owner has taken the attitude “if you don’t like it take your writing elsewhere attitude.” Apparently he doesn’t want to be a “gravy train” to writers.Hello Mr. Today.com owner, $31.00 a month is not a gravy train to us and most of us wouldn’t even write for that amount. I gave today.com a try simply because it takes me like 5 minutes to write 100 words and I love helping people and making a difference in their lives. But, the truth of the matter is that I could make more elsewhere and I’m going to prove it.

In fact, I’m even doing an experiment. The first one will evaluate my newly created today.com blog and compare it with a newly created blogger blog. I am going to write the same amount of articles (covering similar topics) and then see which one makes me the most money at the end of my experiment.

My hypothesis is that my niche blog site is going to kick some today.com butt. I say this becuase once I stop writing posts, it will keep making me moola whether I write 100+ word posts or not.  Plus, I can also capitalize it with affilate links, etc.

So, my advice is if you’re considering blogging at today.com to take advantage of the $1.00 a day post, make sure you’re a good writer and an expert at traffic generation and that your blog can bring in 28,000- 30,000 impressions a month. Otherwise, you might just log into your account for a not so good surprise notice that says  you’ve been demoted.