Niche Blogging For Profit

Blogging can be a fun and profitable way to work from home. However it is important to know what you’re doing in order to maximize your chances of a successful business. By remembering to write regularly, write interesting and original content, optimize your blog for search engines and most importantly market and promote every change you get, you can soon have a popular and profitable blog. The purpose of this post is to walk you through the four stages of blog building in order to show you what to do and what not to do as a beginner blogger.

The worst thing you can do as a blogger is to write sporadically instead of on a schedule. Determine how often you want to write and stick to that schedule. Some blog experts believe that until your blog has 50 posts you should write everyday. I tend to think that unless you plan to keep posting daily, I wouldn’t get your readers expecting it. I shoot for every other day but my posts aren’t always consistent. However if you can manage to keep your schedule, it will make your blog more appealing. Of course it’s not enough to just write on a regular basis, you should also make sure your posts are interesting and informative.

There is a lot of information out there on the net. With all this competition it’s no surprise that only the best and brightest blogs rise to the top. Every time you write a post, be as thorough as possible. Imagine you know nothing about the topic. Ask what you would need to and want to know. Include as much information as possible without being confusing. Also important is to keep your posts interesting. Nothing makes a reader close a browser quicker than a boring, drawn out post. The simplest way to write a post that people will want to read is to write as if you were talking to a friend – within reason of course. Obviously leave out profanity and obscene comments as well as any offensive or inappropriate language. Other than that write in a friendly and informal manner that your readers will find appealing. Once you’ve got posts that people will want to read, it is time to focus on getting the attention of the search engines.

Search engines, such as Google and Yahoo, remain the most popular way that people online find information. That makes it important to rank high on them. While there are tricks to make it easier for the search engines to find you and more attractive so the search engines will give you a good rank, usually it is a matter of time before you’ll appear near the first few pages of search. The first trick is to pick a niche, or topic, that doesn’t have a lot of competition and isn’t well covered online. Next you should try to include one or more “key phrases” in your posts that are likely search phrases. For example, if you blog is about themes for sweet sixteen parties, the phrases “sweet sixteen” and “party themes” would be key phrases for your blog and would appear in many of your posts. One of the difficulties of search engines optimization is that the search engines change the rules so often that something that may have worked well last month may not work at all today. Writing good high-quality content never goes out of style so my advice is to rely on that. Of course marketing your blog is also crucial to bringing in traffic.

There are many great and free ways to market your blog. Article marketing is one of the most popular and my personal favorite. Sites like EzineArticles and Associated Content can bring dozens of new visitors to your blog every day. Commenting on related blogs is also a free way to bring in traffic. Just be sure that your comments are relevant and appropriate or your comment will probably end up being deleted. Finally exchanging links with other related blogs can drive traffic to your blog. And these are only three of the completely free marketing ideas for your blog.

These four tips will help you start the journey to a successful blog. Remember, don’t write sporadically; don’t write uninteresting posts; do maximize your blog for search engines; do market your blog extensively. That sums up blogging for beginners.

Blogging is fun and interesting to do but it is also a pretty good way to make money. Follows are the five best jobs for bloggers looking to make a living online.

1. Niche Blogging - Of course niche blogging is at the top of my list. Done well, niche blogging can eventually give you a passive income (meaning you no longer need to do any work) of $5,000 or more a month. Not bad for not having to do anything. Niche blogging is setting up relatively basic blogs about one very specific subject in order inform the people in that particular niche. Money is made through advertising, affiliate sales and personal product sales. Niche blogging is really a numbers game. Generally speaking, niche blogs don’t make a ton of money on their own. You can expect each blog (if built correctly) to make an average $5 – $40 a day depending on the niche and the traffic to the blog. Some may make more but those figures have been my experience. Obviously, in order to make a decent living, you will have to create several niche blogs. Fortunately ofter the original setup, niche blogs don’t require much maintenance. For an example of a niche blog, check out www.yardsaletips.net
2. Authority Blogging- Authority blogging is like niche blogging in that it talks about a certain topic to a certain niche of people. Authority bloggers also make their money through advertising, affiliate and personal product sales. The difference is that rather than writing a bunch of niche articles and basically “finishing” the blog quickly, authority bloggers run an on-going blog with regular updates (new posts) every day, week, or month. They are more work than niche blogs, it isn’t a passive income because you have to continue working on the blog. But if you love your topic (and most authority bloggers do) it seems less like work and more like talking to a group of friends who like the same thing you do. Both niche and authority bloggers could be considered Internet marketers.
3. Guest Blogger- Being a guest blogger usually requires you to be an expert in a certain subject or uniquely qualified to guest blog – if you want to get paid anyway. If you feel you know a lot about a subject, enough to qualify you as a niche expert, or you’ve earned a degree in a certain field, or you’ve work at a particular job for a long period of time, you could be a guest blogger. It is probably a good idea to start by writing articles and creating a lens on Squidoo in order to establish yourself as an expert in your subject. Eventually you can place a small ad on your lens or personal blog offering your services as a guest blogger.
4. Moderator for big-time blogs - Some really big blogs can have thousands of posts and receive thousands of comments each day. These blogs need someone (or someones) to moderate these comments and approve or disapprove of them. You may also be required to respond to comments in a way appropriate to the tone of the blog. While these jobs aren’t big money-makers, it is easy to do and don’t require much effort or skill. This would be a good place to get a start and learn how a successful blog works from the inside out. Later on, if you start your own blog you’ll have a good knowledge of what to do and what not to do.
5. Membership Blogs - If you really want to get involved in a big money-maker and you can pull it off, a membership blog is the way to go. A membership blog is basically an authority blog with extensive and extraordinary content, perhaps with unique features that you charge your readers a monthly (or bimonthly or semiannually) fee for access to. If you can drum up enough readers willing to pay your membership fee time and time again (called residual income) you’re on your way to financial freedom.

Blogging sounds like so much fun that you can’t wait to start. All you have to do is write you thoughts online and people will read them? You can even make money this way? Seriously?

Seriously. So you go out and set up your very own blog. Maybe it’s a personal blog or a blog about something you’re interested in. Great. You pick out an awesome theme and upload your best profile pic. Wonderful. And then that ‘add new post’ page stares back at you. All of a sudden you forget all of those witty antedotes and funny stories and you can’t think of a thing to write. For the beginner blogger, here are five how-tos that will help break blogger’s block.

1. Choose a topic you really love talking about – You know that thing you and your friends spend hours chatting about? Or that subject you’re always searching online for more information about?
2. Don’t overthink it too much - Remember, people are coming to your blog to read the real you, not some fake “writer’s voice”. Blogs are meant to be less formal and more friendly so don’t get too caught up in what you say and how you say it.
3. Save a draft - Sometimes when you spend a good deal of time working on something you begin to lose perspective. In much the same way as when you say the same word over and over again and it begins to lose meaning. If you start to feel like nothing sounds just right, save the post to draft and come back to it later when your view has had a chance to replenish.
4. Read other blogs – Sometimes it helps to read other blogs to get a new perspective. You can choose to read other blogs that are related to the topic of your blog or you can just read any other blog that you like. The point is to get some fresh ideas and possibly a different direction to go in.
5. You can always rely on links - If worse comes to worst you can always fall back on what I call a link post. You either write a little bit about another blog, site or page and then link to it. Once your blog has been going for a while you can write a “favorite posts” post and link back to your own posts. It’s a win-win situation.

Blogging is popular (almost everyone has one), fun and possibly profitable. But before you get into blogging, all the themes, plug-ins, widgets and other lingo can be overwhelming. So if you’re wondering how do I start blogging, this article is for you.

Choose a topic

If you’re planning to blog for fun, you can choose any subject that appeals to you – one that you’re passionate  and hopefully knowledgeable about.

If you’re looking to make money with a blog there is an entire process you should go through. You can read more about that here. Odds are if your find something interesting, there are other people out there who will too (provided your interest isn’t the world record for longest nose hair)

Find a hosting company

There are plenty of free blog hosting companies that are very good. Blogger.com is my favorite – easy to use, plenty of modules, and the ability to place ads. WordPress.com is the free version of the popular WordPress.org hosting. If you want to use your own domain name (www.yourpick.com) you will need to pay for hosting. I strongly recommend using WordPress blogs hosted by HostGator. They are affordable (about 10 bucks a month) loaded with options, you can host as many domains are you want with one account and their customer service is excellent; quick, friendly and helpful.

Set Up Your Theme And Format

Once you’ve picked your hosting option and set up anything you need to set up, comes the fun part – choosing your theme and format. Blogger.com has limited number of themes (about 12) but some are very nice and should suffice for a basic personal or professional blog.

WordPress.org has hundreds of themes and formats to choose from. Two, three, four, or even five columns in every color and background you can imagine. These themes are made by other people – not employees of WordPress – and submitted to the theme catalog. Not all of the themes have all the bugs worked out yet so you might need to pick a backup. The free partner of WordPress has more than 60 themes to choose from and many of the user-friendly aspects of WordPress.org.

Start Blogging/Posting

That’s about it for setting up! All that’s left to do is start writing. For your first post you’ll probably want to introduce yourself and explain a little about what your blog is about. After that the sky is the limit. Let your creative juices flow and have lots of fun. Happy Blogging!

Blogging is not only fun – you can make money with it too. In fact there are many different ways to make money with your blog. Here I talk about just four of the many.

Advertising

Ever since Google came out with their Adsense program, many companies have created similar contextual advertising systems. Simply put you insert a small bit of code on your blog that will display ads related to the content of your blog page. Each time a visitor to your blog clicks on one of these ads, you’ll get paid a certain amount. This amount usually isn’t a lot – between .01 and 2 or 3 dollars on average.

If you really want to make good money with advertising, you’re going to want to sell advertsiing space on your blog directly to advertisers. Once your blog has achieved a following, it should be easy to sell space on your blog. Many well know blogs make hundreds a month just by selling advertising.

Product Sales

Selling affiliate products is another way you can use your blog to make money. Search for your niche plus the words “affilliate product” to find products. Write a post or a page about the product to give your readers an idea of the benefits. If you sell quality items and don’t push by selling, selling, selling all the time – your readers will be more likely to buy.

Pay Per Review

There are companies online that will pay you to review their product, blog, site, etc. Of course how much you get paid depends on how much traffic your blog gets. Keep in mind that both the product’s creator and your readers want an honest review. Don’t feel that because you’re getting paid for the review that it has to be all positive. The review should be thorough and complete, perhaps with screenshots if appropriate.

Membership Blogs

If your blog is suited to a very specific niche and provides quality information, maybe that is unavailable elsewhere or teaches a valuable skill, you could consider running a membership blog where your readers pay a certain amount of money to become a member of your blog. This isn’t the easiest way to make money but if you can pull it off, you’re looking at a great source of residual income.

Blogs have been around almost as long as the Internet itself. Even before blogging as an activity became popular, people created online communities. At some point in the 1990s, the concept of “Threads”, or online conversations that went back and forth, became popular.

During the late 90s through the turn of the century, people began using the Internet to keep web diaries or journals. This was the beginning of the basic blog. A student at Swarthmore College, Justin Hall, is generally credited as being one of the first bloggers – in 1994

Blogs were quite popular at this time with the “tech geek” crowd but hadn’t really taken off yet.

By 2001, blogging was becoming a full-fledged fad. Books, videos and tutorials on blogging began to pop up. Within the next three years, celebrities, politicians and companies slowly began to use blogs as a way to reach people and get their message out.

Today, blogs are used for just about everything. It seems like you’re no one unless someone is reading your blog. Companies have blogs to announce product changes. People have blogs to express their feelings about just about anything. Bloggers have blogs to inform and sell. And I have a blog just to let you know all this about blogging.

Every family gathering is the same for me. Eventually someone asks me what I do for a living usually by saying something like “so-and-so said you work on the computer.” I respond by saying that I’m a blogger and an Internet Marketer. I pull out a business card as if to prove both those jobs actually exist. Then I brace myself for the next question which I know is coming, “How do you make money at that?”

How to explain that money trickles in from various sources – advertising, affiliate sales, freelance writing, product sales, paid reviews, and others? Explaining what I do to someone who doesn’t know a lot about computers and bloggers is a lot like trying to teach someone a foreign language within a fifteen minute conversation.

Have you ever had this same awkward situation? If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky but prepare for the day when some well-meaning but blogging-illiterate person asks you what you do for a living.

What is a blog? – For complete beginners

A blog is both very different and very similar from a regular static website. While the content is created in much the same way, blogs are more fluid to allow items to be placed at the webmasters whim and allows the visitors to respond to the writer’s content. This is beneficial for both sides as well as being quite fun. As a side note you can tell people that technically blog is short for web log and was originally intended mostly as an online journal.

Once people discovered blogs they gravitated that way because blogs were easy to create and powerful for gaining attention and traffic. Basically blogs were a dream come true for people looking to spread information over the Internet.

Since income can begin to dripping in slowly for awhile before you start to see any real income, people will ask you what it is that you do and how do you make money at it? There are several ways to make money with blogs. Selling other people’s products, selling your own products, selling advertising, using contextual ads like Google Adsense and selling your reviews to people looking for marketing.

Finally you will get the most annoying and I find the most insulting question: “Is that a real job?” Yes it is a real job. It is similar to crossing a copywriter and a journalist. I spend hours every week researching and reading. I also spend hours writing and rewriting articles before typing them into my computer and putting then where they need to go. And that’s just the pleasant part of my job. Forget about SEO, networking, marketing, article marketing, link exchanges and keeping up with Google’s frequently changing policies.

Anyone who works from home knows it isn’t all lounging around in our pajamas and talking to friends all day. In fact there is precious little chance for relaxing or socializing during the “work day”

If you are planning on starting an at-home Internet Marketing business (niche blogging is a form of Internet marketing) so you can work when you want and have more time for yourself – forget it. Internet marketing is a more-than-full time job.  For example here is a sample of my daily routine.

6:30 am – Get up and get the kids fed and ready for school

7:45 am – Take my daughter to preschool

8:00 am – Run to the store for some things

8:30 am – Run to the supermarket for groceries

9:15 am – Unload groceries and put food away

9:45 am – Pick up daughter from Preschool

10:00 – 11:30 am – Answer emails, check traffic stats, research niches and write posts

11:30 – 12:00 pm - Make lunch for daughter and myself and eat.

12:00 – 2:00 pm – Daily housework

2:00 – 4:00 pm – Work on articles, posts and special projects

4:00 – 6:00 pm – Make dinner and dinnertime

6:00 – 6:30 pm – Clean up after dinner, put dishes to wash

6:30 – 7:30 pm – Me Time!

7:30 – 8:00 pm – Put daughter to bed

8:00 – 11:00 pm - More work, networking, plan for tomorrow, writing

11:00 pm – Bedtime

As you can see, it is nearly constant all day and night. It take a lot of organization and discipline and determination to make it successful in this business, especially if you also have a family to take care of. Working at home is not the lazy way out for sure.

While some people blog for pleasure, the rest of us is interest in making money. Luckily there are more than a few different ways to make money with a niche blog. In fact, the secret to earning a living as an Internet Marketer is multiple streams of potential income. Here are some of the most popular ways to make money with a niche blog.

1. Contextual Advertising – This is advertisements that is placed on your blog with the content of the ads based on the niche topic or target keywords of the blog. Google’s Adsense is the most popular contextual advertiser and the only one I’ve had any luck making money with but there are others out there. While Adsense won’t make you rich (unless you have hundreds of well-performing blogs), it’s a free way to make a small income and should be included in most niche blogging strategies.
2. Selling Affiliate Products – When other people offer to give you a percentage of the sales price of a product if your market and sell that product it is called an affiliate partnership. Whole websites are set up to connect affiliates with products. My favorite is Commission Junction because they are way to use and have a wide variety of products. Clickbank is also very popular. Clickbank specializes more in digital products that are available for immediate download. Clickbank is also popular because they offer high commissions averaging 40-50% rather than the 5% or 10% you get from most other places.
3. Selling Self-Created Products – If you think getting 50% of a product’s price is great, imagine how great it is to receive 100% of the sales prices. Eventually you will want to consider creating your own niche-related products whether ebooks, reports, podcasts, or tutorials. Selling your own products is the first step in really creating a lucrative Internet Marketing business
4. Selling Advertising Space – Serious bloggers always set aside a specific amount of space for advertisements. As your niche blog gains popularity, other bloggers and companies will pay you to show their banners or buttons on your site. Don’t expect much money at first but over time this could end up being the main source of income from your blogs.
5. Selling Completed Niche Blogs – Lastly, you can make money selling blogs that you have finished, marketed  and built up a reputation (and traffic) for. Some Internet Marketers do nothing but “fix and flip” websites and blogs for quick profit. If this is something that interests you, you can learn more about Virtual Real Estate. Even if flipping isn’t your thing, you may find yourself in a position where you are no longer interested in keeping a blog updated or you want to make a quick buck in a pitch.

No matter what the endeavor, when you are first starting out it is best to read and research as much as possible. This holds true for niche blogging as well/ It is important to understand the ins and outs of picking niches, writing content, and marketing sites. Aside from this blog (of course) there are several very good ebooks, available for free, that can help any niche blogger from newbie to old pro.

1. Knock, Knock- This ebook is written by the famous Internet guru Seth Godin. Godin is popular for his easy writing style and concise way of breaking things down. Knock, Knock is the earliest ebook I could find of his and while it deals with building websites, it offers a lot of useful information about design.
2. Who’s There- Godin’s follow up ebook to Knock, Knock, this one is actually about blogging and how to earn money with blogs. Anytime I feel burnt out and need a refresher I go back and read this ebook again.
3. Encyclopedia of Free Online Advertising- Although the writer of this ebook, Luke W Parker, called it an encyclopedia, it is more like the frugal blogger’s bible to me. Every method of advertising that you can think of is included and rated based on three criteria: Quantity (how much traffic you’ll get), Quality (how targeted the traffic is), and Time To Deliver (how fast it takes to get the traffic). Terrific for when you think your blog needs a new type of boost or you’re just interested in making more money.
4. An Insider’s Guide To Writing Articles - It’s no secret that I consider article writing to be one of the best free advertising methods. This ebook by John Colanzi walks you step by step through the article writing process. Definitely worth a look.
5. Practical Introduction To Google Adsense- This ebook was released last July by Digital Resale Rights and My Adsense Empire. Although it does discuss how to earn money with adsense, it is the in depth explanation of adsense and its features that I found most useful. If you’re at all confused about any aspect of Google’s Adsense program, you’re likely to find the answer you’re looking for in this ebook