>> One
of the questions I see frequently asked on online
discussion forums is, "Can You Really Make Money From
Blogging?" People want to know if there's some way to
profit from the time they spend maintaining their
weblogs or personal online journals.
My answer is an emphatic "YES," because I do it...
everyday!
Today I'll share with you how I do it.
Let me begin by saying that I don't make thousands per
month from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have many
making hundreds. Since I don't put in a lot of time
maintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the
money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with my
laptop (on a wireless connection)... watching the clouds
roll by.
Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helps my
regular websites that are set up as my "money machines."
The search engines visit my blogs more often than they
visit my regular sites, and they follow the links from
my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these links
point to my sites, and some point to sites of partners.
This does help the search engine rankings of these sites
MASSIVELY.
How Do I Monetize My Blogs?
I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people
are searching for... and that they are spending money on.
I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what
my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing
to spend their advertising dollars on.
I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. I simply insert
these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places on
the webpage. I also experiment with other paid
advertising on my blogs.
I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply find
affiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and
Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs.
I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc.
You can also locate suitable affiliate products by
typing your target keywords + "affiliate program" at any
major search engine. This should point out numerous
websites with suitable affiliate programs to you.
How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?
I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using
Moveable Type. This is just one of many great pieces of
blogging software. You have other choices... my
programmer recommended this one to me.
I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have
them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy to
set up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them on
Blogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and they
index webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!
The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit your
blogs often is a technique called "blogging and pinging."
It's a method of notifying all of the major search
engines, and blog directories, each time that you update
your blog. The search engines come to take a look and
they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites.
It's very powerful.
I won't go into too much details on blogging and pinging
here. If you want more information on that topic I
invite you to drop by my free, Internet marketing
discussion board and ask any and all questions! It's at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi
Examples Of Profitable Blogs?
I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs :-)
To show you how simple it can be I'll show you just ONE.
It’s less than 2 months old :-)
The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone
as an example, it's instantly ripped off. So, I'm going
to "sacrifice" one making me about $60 per day from
affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSense
revenue. That site is at:
http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.com
The above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for the
term "cure nail fungus." It's a small niche but one that
makes me $2400 per month... just from that one blog.
If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is
not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4:
http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.html
That happens to be one of my pages too :-) I won't tell
you what ALL I'm up to on that page... that's another
article. The technique involves using your own domains
to promote affiliate products rather than advertising
someone else's domain... so it improves your link
popularity.
I'm not going to show more of my blogs because that just
invites competition. Instead, I'm going to answer
another question you have to be wondering...
"How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even
if they are profitable?"
Well, first of all, I don't really need a lot like the
"sacrificial lamb" that I showed you above to keep me
satisfied.
I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is
called AutoBlogger. You can check it out at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.html
What AutoBlogger does is allow me to queue up a number
of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you
queue up "articles" which can really be anything you
want. Then you tell the software at what frequency to
make a post.
My AutoBlogger account allows me to automatically post
to an UNLIMITED number of blogs.
WARNING: A program like AutoBlogger can get you in
trouble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abuse
the search engines, it's just going to get you banned.
If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they're just
going to delete your blogs.
Here's how I use AutoBlogger:
I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing... as
just one example. On these sites I share many of my
articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits
to post at a given frequency. This frequency can be a
set number of hours, days, weeks, or months. So
theoretically, I can set up a blog, pre-schedule 50
posts, and not touch it in months, while it is
automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.
AutoBlogger even lets you set it to start rotating
through the posts again when they run out, if you want
to. I personally wouldn't do this since you'd just be
posting duplicate content.
AutoBlogger allows you to insert RSS feeds right into
your blog posts. So in addition to posting articles you
can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds at a set
interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites
(without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generally pull
from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sent to my
other sites.
If you don't even feel like queuing up a lot of posts,
you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone
else to do it for you... or just hired your kids to do
it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.
OK, I've just proven to you that you can make money off
of blogs. In-fact, you can make more money than many
people make off of their REGULAR websites. It just takes
a little thinking outside the box!
It also takes not being too greedy. What I just showed
you works for me because I'm not doing anything that's
likely to get me banned from the search engines, Google
AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program. It's
only when you get carried away, and do things that harm
the search engines that you "shoot yourself in the foot."
Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular
posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seems
unnatural. By that, I mean don't auto-post twenty times
in an hour, or post every hour for a month! No human can
possible post to a blog at these rates for long, so the
search engines detect something is "wrong." They don't
generally prohibit you from using tools to make your job
easier... just don't get carried away!
There are actually, thousands of people earning a living
doing things similar to what I just shared... but with
little twists. I'm meeting up with many of them in New
Orleans in September. You're invited to join us. We'll
basically be sharing how we make a fortune off of niche
websites and programs such as Google AdSense.
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