Make money blogging

Blogging has become a somewhat phenomenon in recent years and continues to grow in popularity. It is so easy to set up a blog these days and you can literally have one up in 5 minutes. One of the biggest topics within the blogosphere (the world of blogging) is whether it is possible to make money blogging? Well, we can say for sure that it is possible to make money blogging as long as you know what you are doing.

Blogs are obviously at the core of our business here on buyblogreviews.com and we know quite a bit about the subject. There are close to 23,000 bloggers on our database, many of which are successful in making money from blogging. We very often get asked ‘how to make money blogging' both from those that are new to the subject to those that have existing blogs but not making money – advice for both parties is fundamentally the same, and so we've put together a quick guide on the steps you'll need to take in making money blogging.

Step 1: Niche Research

So assuming you don't have a blog, the first question that you'll need to ask yourself is what topic (niche) shall I write about? You'll have to think long and hard about this as ultimately you'll need to be able to motivate yourself to actually sit down and write lots of content on the subject. Therefore, the general consensus is that you should pick a topic or niche that you have lots of knowledge about and that you are passionate about. Are you a hardcore gym user that loves exercising? Are you a keen gardener that likes to grow your own vegetables? Or do you like to write about the new fashion trends? It doesn't matter how obscure the topic is, as long as you're passionate about it and are confident that there will be interest.

Once you have earmarked a topic to write about, how can you check whether there is a market for it or that anyone is likely to read it? A good way to gauge the potential audience is to conduct keyword research – this is where you get figures for exactly how many times a certain keyword phrase gets searched on the search engines.

Step 2: Domains & Hosting

Once you've done your research, its time to get set up! There are two alternatives: firstly, you can set your blog up on a common free blog platform like blogger and wordpress.com – this will be ideal for a simple personal blog that doesn't cost you anything, but there are certain limitations and you may not be able to fully make money blogging. The second alternative is to register your own domain and set up hosting for it Once you fully own and control your domain, you will be able to create a long term asset whilst making money blogging.

Once you've set up hosting, we recommend installing and using Wordpress which is by far the most common and powerful blogging platform. This can be done very easily using the ‘One Click Installation' with Fantastico.

Whichever method of setting up your blog you choose, ensure that it is optimised for the search engines. Most bloggers forget to do this, but having the right on page structure will make it easier for the search engines to find your blog and hence more traffic from your site.

Step 3: Adding Content

If you have researched your niche properly, you shouldn't have much difficulty in writing good quality content. Depending on the nature of your blog, it is always important to produce quality unique and engaging content that readers will gain value from and keep coming back. Great content has many benefits and you will find that other bloggers in your niche link back to you proving traffic and links – this will help you to make money blogging.

Step 4: Driving Traffic

This is by far one of the most important steps – you can go and create the most well designed blog with great content, but if there is no one coming to your site, what good is it? At first, it may be daunting as there are hundred of ways to drive traffic to your blog, but the key is to be consistent in your marketing and analyse what is working and what is not. Some of the most common ways of driving traffic to your blog are:

Article Marketing – this involves writing relevant articles and submitting to the top article directories. Good quality articles will provide both direct traffic and links that will help you rank higher in the search engines.

Press Releases – it's quite easy to write a press release from most topics on your blog. To get real benefit, aim to write a piece on a breaking news story (that is obviously relevant to your niche)

Guest Posting – this method basically involves contacting and writing a guest post for the top players/bloggers in your niche. This will provide both traffic and exposure.
Blog Commenting – by commenting and engaging in highly trafficked blogs in your niche, you will soon build both reputation and traffic to your blog. The same method can be applied to relevant forums in your niche -

Social Media – this is a big area that can bring lots of traffic to your site. This involves using major social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to build high volumes of traffic to your site. It takes a lot of hard work but you can use these channels to become an authority in your niche.

The above are some of the ‘free' ways of driving traffic to your blog, and this will ultimately decide whether you make money blogging or not. There are also paid methods of driving traffic and this works best if you are selling a direct product through your blog – like an info product.

Step 5: Monetizing Your Blog

So you've researched, set up your blog, wrote quality content and then set about driving traffic to your blog – what next? Well, assuming you have put time and effort into the above steps, monetizing or making money from your blog should be easy. For most blogs, the following are ways of making money from your blog:

Affiliate Programs – there are so many options for you to integrate an affiliate program into your blog. To put it simply, you will sell someone else's product (that is obviously relevant to your blog) from your blog for a commission.

Cost Per Click (CPC) Ad Networks – basically these networks will scan the content on your blog and show relevant ads; each time someone clicks these ads you will get paid. The most common network by far is Google Adsense, who have the most sophisticated system.
Direct Ad Sales – once your blog gets more popular you can set about selling ad space directly. If your blog is getting good traffic, there will almost always be advertisers willing to pay you money in exchange for ad space.

Blog Reviews – the same concept of selling ad space, you could offer to write reviews of other peoples products on your blog, and be paid for it! This is an easy way to make money blogging especially if you enjoy writing. You don't have to find advertisers yourself, but simply sign up to sites like buyblogreviews.com who have many brand name advertisers within their ranks, thus saving you valuable time.

The above is really a broad guide on how to make money blogging. The next most popular question is 'how long will it take me to make money blogging'. Well, this really depends on how much time, effort and thought one puts into it – there are simply too many variables to give a realistic indication but one thing is for certain it won't happen overnight.

There are lots of people already making money blogging and so can you!

Source : blog review