Niche Blogging For Profit

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!

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

Today we are going to cover the last part of the niche marketing concept. – getting traffic and getting readers to keep reading your blog.

The first thing you should when your niche blog is all set up is submit your URL (domain name address, usually www.something.com) to all the big search engines. Here are the links to the ones you should at least start with:

Google: www.google.com/addurl.html

MSN: http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx?FORM=WHWL

DMOZ: http://www.dmoz.org/ click on suggest URL

Yahoo!: http://www.yahoo.com/ scroll to bottom and click on suggest site

Currently Ask.com doesn’t accept URL submissions so you have to wait for their bots to crawl your site before you’ll be added to their directory.

You should have added the All-in-One SEO plug-in to your WordPress blog. If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you do so. It will help the search engines notice your niche blog and get you propelled to the top of the rankings faster.

Also, once you have the plug-in installed and activated…you have to use it. Fill in all the appropriate fields for every post and page that you want people to visit. (you don’t have to bother doing this for your privacy page or FAQs or anything like that)

Now that your pages and posts are set up to be picked up by the search engines. And the search engines know you exist, it’s time to think about article marketing.

Article marketing is simply writing short (between 400 and 700 words) articles about your subjects involving your niche. You then take these articles and submit them to some of the hundreds of article directories out there.

There are a few reasons why article marketing is a such an effective method for getting traffic:

• Good article directories already have a high rank on Google and Alexa so your articles will appear on search engines (high up usually on page one) almost immediately.
• Other bloggers and website owners who have related niche sites will use your articles giving your site all-important backlinks and a runoff of their traffic.
• Publishing several articles on a subject makes you something of an expert in the eyes of readers on the web. If people like what you have to say, they will click through your bio link to read more.

Additionally, you may get offers for guest blogging which can be a good way to network and build up your name (or brand) even more. Finally, you can make a decent part time income off article writing with the right site.

I used to submit my articles to a dozen directories but now I just stick to the two best ones (in my opinion):

Associated Content: I love this directory. Not only do you have the chance to get paid up front for your article, they have a huge reader base and they pay for page views  on a monthly basis. I know people who make a couple of hundred dollars alone through AC. Plus they are marketing their site. Essentially, you are getting paid for them to advertise your site! Just make sure you carefully read the terms of service so your articles have a better chance of getting accepted.

Ezine Articles: This directory doesn’t pay for your articles but they have probably the largest reader base and the best ranks through Google and Alexa. Your articles are likely to be picked up through Ezine Articles for use on other sites which gives you an even better chance of getting traffic.

Start with two or three articles for each niche blog. make sure the articles are significantly different from the articles you have on your blog; otherwise the directories may reject your submissions.

Oh I forgot to mention the best thing about article marketing, it’s completely free if you decide to write your own articles. If writing isn’t your forte (strength) you can “farm” out the articles for a few bucks per article.

Once you have a marketing strategy in motion, you will need to periodically maintain interest in your blog through article marketing (one or two a month should suffice) and new posts.

Posting on your blog should be consistent but you get to set the schedule. You can post every day, every other day (which is what I shoot for but often fall short), once a week or even every other week as long as you are consistent. naturally the more often you post, the more likely you will keep interest in your site from your faithful readers (remember- it’s all about them)

Now you have all the basic knowledge to start and run your own niche blog. Good luck and check back often for the latest and greatest tools to help you succeed in the world of Niche Blogging!