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 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.

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.

Before I talk about why niche blogging, I’m going to take a moment to explain what is niche blogging. Niche blogging is simply the setting up of a blog for a particular niche, which is a specific market. For the purposes of this blog, niche will usually refer to a topic that is interesting to a particular segment of people (a market).

Most professional blogs are “niche” blogs whether they call themselves that or not. Any blog that is designed to gain the attention of a certain group of people and make money from them – Niche Blog. And this type of blogging can be very profitable (otherwise why would all those people be doing it?) if done correctly. I’ve seen people who know nothing of Internet marketing build a niche blog and within a few months are making hundreds of dollars a month. While that may not be a big deal with one blog, imagine if you build four or five blogs? Now we’re talking about a decent income there. Eventually you may decide to sell your niche blog. Blogs with good traffic can fetch thousands of dollars.

Combine all that with the fact that setting up niche blogs are fairly simple and require very little money upfront (just the cost of the domain and web-hosting) and you can see why the Niche Marketing industry is such a hot topic right now. But it is also important to realize that on the Internet things can change almost daily – New technology comes out, search engines change their rules, advertisers move to greener pastures…anything can happen. That’s why it is vital to stay on top of the latest breaking news in this industry. You have to be two steps ahead. Or at least one.

That’s why I’m here. I’ve set up this niche blog to discuss the best ways to earn money from your niche blogging. There are a variety or ways to make money from a blog including but not limited to: Adsense and other text ads, selling ad space, selling affiliate products, selling your own products, and selling reviews to other companies. Some of these ways are better than others; some are easier, some are more profitable, some are just expected from a niche. In any case, you can be sure you’ll make money if you put the time and effort into Niche Blogging.