Niche Blogging For Profit

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.

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

When I tell people I work from home, most of them envision sleeping late, working in pajamas and taking long lunches. While I will admit that I have worked in sweats from time to time, I’m usually hard at work by eight am and just finishing up by nine or ten at night. Also I frequently eat lunch at my desk.

In short, working from home is hard. There are a million distractions, people don’t take your “career” seriously and most of the time you’re doing everything yourself. One thing that you can do to both help keep yourself on track and show others that your work is “real” work is to treat your home-based Internet Marketing business just like you would if your were starting a brick and mortar business offline.

Start by writing a basic business plan. Remember that this is for your eyes only and should simply state your objectives, goals and business strategy. Name your “company” even if it’s just you behind a computer. Print up some business cards and keep track of your expenses and income. All this planning and paperwork will do more than just make your business more legitimate to friends, family and any lending institutes you may need a loan from, will make tax time easier, keep organization and expansion a priority and finally allow you to separate work from home more easily.

Every business has tools of the trade necessary to do the job right and niche blogging is no exception. Of course your need domains and hosting butwhat about other tols to make your job easier and your business run smoother? Here’s a list of 5 tools that every blogger should have in order to make the most of every niche site.

• FTP Software – in most cases, this is an absolute necessity for a blogger. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) programs allow you to upload files to your web host. For those you using WordPress, FTP is the way you upload themes and plugins for your blogs. SmartFTP used to be the best free FTP program but they have starting charging for it recently. If you don’t mind paying the $36.95 fee then I would still recommend SmartFTP. If you’re like me and you prefer to use freeware when possible, you can try Coffeecup FTP. Coffeecup FTP is a well-established and highly respected software development company. Their FTP program is less streamlined than SmartFTP but still quite easy to use.
• Site Statistic Tracker – The key to success in Internet Marketing is knowing what works and what doesn’t. The best way to know if your blogs are performing well or in need of some love is to track the traffic coming to the site. Google’s Analytics is a popular program used for this purpose but I’ve personally had bad luck with it. One thing I as from a statistics service is consistency. StatCounter is a terrific, not to mention completely free, service that tells you just about everything you’d ever need or want to know.
• Feed Aggregator – As an Internet Marketer it is important to stay on top of what’s happening in your niche. The easiest was to stay on top of what the buzz is is to keep all your fellow bloggers’ blogs organized in one place called a feed aggregator. There are tons to choose from…even google has a google reader for feeds. I personally use Bloglines and have never had any problem with them.
• Twitter Account – Internet presence is crucial to a niche blogger. Twitter is great because you can keep in touch with a bunch of people all at once, it only takes a couple of seconds to “twitter” what you’re doing, and last be not least, it i a great war to introduce your affiliate products and blogs. All in all, twitter is a free way to get traffic and hopefully make sales.
• Facebook Account – As I’ve said before, networking and a good Internet presence is important. Facebook allows you to create a personalized profile that you can share with professional contacts. It is vital to remember to stay profession on your Facebook account since that’s where your prospective customers will go to “check you out” before deciding to trust you. Avoid posting or uploading anything you wouldn’t want a future employer to see. I would also recommend not signing up for every add-on and group outthere, they just clutter up your profile which you should keep clean and streamlined. Use your account to post your projects, talk about affiliate products and flesh out your personality online.

While some of these tools may seem like unneccessary work, creating an online persona is vital to having a sucessful online business. People need to trust you and to trust you they need to know you.

Today I’m going to talk about what to do after  you’ve decided on the perfect niche idea.

1. Buying a domain name. In order to be looked upon as a professional, it is best to buy a domain and hosting. The price of a domain can vary quite a bit so shop around for a price that works for you. For domain names only I have found 1&1.com to be reasonably priced ($6.99 for one year of a .com domain) and easy to work with. Since you will most likely be transferring your domain to another web host (I strongly advise against hosting with 1&1.com) you want to find a company that makes it easy to change your name servers (DNS).

The most important thing is to include your niche keyword or phrase in your domain. Next you should focus on trying to get a .com but, like with dating, most of the good ones are taken. If you cannot get a .com domain, you should get a .net. Only as a absolute last resort you should try any other type of domain. While .info and .org are generally assumed to be okay, I have found that they do not provide the same effect to customers and search engines as .com and .net.

Use this domain search to see if the domain name you want is available!

2. Find a good hosting company. Just about everyone is offering hosting nowadays. While there is some debate within the niche marketing world, I still find Hostgator to be the best hosting company around. For one, they are reasonably priced at only $7.95 a month for unlimited domains hosted. Their Cpanel makes it easy to install Wordpress (which I highly recommend using for your blogs) as well as other applications that are useful in maintaining a website or blog. Second, on the few occasions that I have to contact customer service, they have responded quickly  within a day or two and explained things clearly and thoroughly. When working online, customer service should trump price every time. This is your business and livelihood so it is important to deal with people who take it as seriously as you do.

3. Install and Set up WordPress.Once you have your domain name pointed to your web hosting account, you can install WordPress from the Fantastico De Luxe option on your Cpanel. You will have to set up a Wordpress account with a separate username and password. As of right now you have to do this for every blog you set up with WordPress. Although it’s a bit inconvenient, you can use the same information for each blog if you want to make it easier to remember. At first it all may seem a bit confusing and overwhelming but WordPress also has many options available to you if you need help with something. Browse their extensive FAQ menu or post a question in their helpful community forum to get quick answers to any of your questions. Alternatively, you can email me at admin(at)nichebloggingforprofit.com and I will try my best to answer any of your questions.

4. Customize your WordPress Blog. At WordPress.org you can find tons of free themes, plugins, and widgits for your blog. Plan on spending some time browsing around to find items to best suit your needs. Personally I like three-column themes. I have my favorite list of plug-ins including Adman, All-in-one SEO, Gospress, and Inline Javascript which I upload to every one of my blogs. I still find widgits a bit iffy to work with but you may have a better experience with them so go ahead and give them a try. You will need a FTP program to upload your plugins and themes to your hosting. This is probably the most difficult thing to learn when dealing with WordPress but once you have it figured out it will be clean sailing. I use Smart FTP which is a free program and fairly easy to learn. If you have any problems figuring out your FTP address (you can find them under the FTP Manager option of your Cpanel) you can email Hostgator and they should be able to tell you what you are doing incorrectly.

Now your WordPress niche blog is set up and ready to start adding content to! Next time I will talk about writing for your niche blog, finding advertising that will help you earn money from your blog, driving and tracking the traffic to your blog.

Happy Blogging!