Does Blogging Really Make Money?

By Simon K Williams


Blogging is the same as any business online - if you want to make money at it you have to get good at it. The only way you can do this is buy understanding how it works. You have to first research your product/subject see how many people are interested in the subject you can do this by simply searching on Google under that word or phrase i.e. if you want to sell a internet marketing course the type in internet marketing into Google and see how search results come up.

Next you must find a niche with in that market so let's say internet marketing gets 25,000,000 results you need to do a search on internet marketing course for people that blog and want to make money this might only get 100,00 results this will be easier to get a high page ranking in goggle. When you have done this you can then build you blog around this subject you must use your search query as your blog title and then in you content as often as possible in the middle of you blog and at the bottom this way Google sees your page as important to the search query and puts to the top if you are at the top you get most of the traffic more traffic means more visitors means you get more money. Try not to put sales links on you blog as Google sees this as a bad thing try to have a web site that sells your product and link to the site from your blog.

When you have achieved this you will start getting lots of traffic to your blog so to make the most of the earning potential on you blog you should put other income streams on you blog first I recommend goggle AdSense this puts relevant adds on you site and this way even if someone comes to you blog and does not like it they might just click on one of your AdSense adds they like the look of and you still earn some money also you can add Amazon to you blog and this does the same thing it displays adds that are relevant to your blog so when people come and look at your blog they get nothing but articles and information on your subject so as you can see you can make money from blogging also blogs are free and you can have as many as you like.



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How to Become a Blogger Millionaire

By Valentina P Bellicova

Blogging has reached the consciousness of the internet mainstream. Casual browsers as well as marketing newbies are drawn to a new phenomena: The Blogger Millionaire. Who wouldn't want to join this growing rank of the financially successful doing something as simple as, well, writing. This is not Pulitzer Prize award winning prose we are talking about, it is just plain, every day writing, something along the lines of penning a note to your best friend, only with blogging, instead of writing the letter on paper and sending it off by mail, the "letter" is keyed on your computer and published for all to see.

I often get asked "OK ... but where is the money?"

I get this from newbies and from those who have been blogging for years alike.

As an example my friend's daughter has had a blog on knitting. She writes about spinning her own yarn, dying it, where to find supplies for her natural dyes. Chrissy has had this blog up for several years and has a nice readership of well over 2000. She's not making any money on it. She could be.

The internet is a new world -- a virtual world. Just like the real one, there are geographical demographics. In the real world we visit countries, cities and addresses. On the internet we visit categories, niches and URL addresses. As in the real world, some addresses are places of business. You can buy books, clothes, knitting wool and needles and more on the internet.

Online sales are the fastest growing segment in retail business. Interestingly, surveys indicate that people go on the internet not to shop, but to get information, to find a solution to a problem. This is why blogs are so useful. Let's stay with Chrissy and her blog which is ChrisysNaturalKnittingWays.com (not a real domain). Here she gives advice on how to spin your own yarn, how to dye it, source of hair for yarn and more. It's an online publication, just like a magazine or newspaper that you buy at your local newsstand, except here she does not have the traditional hard costs of publishing -- no paper, no printing press, no staff, no distribution.

How can she make money with this publication?

Everything on the internet has its twin in the offline world. How do papers and magazines make money? Hint: it's not from the sales of the magazine. Its mainly from the ads.

How many ways can Chrissy monetize her blog?

1. Google AdSense; This is the easiest and fastest way to start earning money. Have you ever visited sites and seen "ads by Google." Owners of businesses, both online and off, realize online advertising is a powerful way to drive traffic to their sites -- both online and off. Of course they want to advertise to their target market.

Chrissy's blog is a unique niche. Not many people spin or die their own yarn. It is a target market that a business which specializes in supplying natural yarn dye would be very interested in advertising to. Natural Yarn Dyes is an advertiser with Google. Google's system finds ChrissysNaturalKnittingWays.com and places Natural Yarn Dyes' add on her blog. A knitter goes to Google, types in the keywords "natural yarn dyes" and is taken to a page on which Chrissy's blog is listed. The knitter clicks on the blog, reads an article on natural dyes with interest, and notices that there is an ad for natural dyes. The knitter clicks on the ad. At that point the advertiser pays Google and Google pays a percentage to Chrissy as payment for displaying the ad.

2. Amazon: This is another source of income. Amazon sells not only books and magazines, but real products. In this case Chrissy needs to open an Amazon Associate account and she can select the products that she wants to promote on her site. It could be a subscription to a knitting magazine, it could be a supplier of unique yarn made from dog hair or any of the many things that serious hobby knitters would be interested in. Every time they click on the Amazon ads on Chrissy's blog, and purchase that product, Chrissy gets a commission from Amazon.

3. Affiliates: Chrissy could search the internet for other suppliers of products that relate to knitting. Perhaps there is someone who has put up a DVD that shows beginners exactly how to knit, showing frame by frame how to execute the knit and the pearl. There are many such merchants who have set up an affiliate program. Chrissy signs up as an affiliate and once again, publishes an ad for that supplier on her blog. The merchant will pay a commission to Chrissy for any visitor to her blog who makes a purchase from that ad. A good affiliate resource is Clickbank.

4. Product: Chrissy is an experienced knitter herself. She could write an e.book on the joys of knitting and put it up for sale on her blog for $27.00. Now she gets to keep all of the money that has been paid for a purchase from her blog.

5. Independent Advertisers: As the traffic to Chrissy's blog grows, she can invite advertisers to put up their banners and charge and upfront fee for the advertising space. What if she has four such ads at only $25 per month each? That is $100 in addition to her other sources of income from her site. As her site gains prominence and traffic, that fee could become $25 per week per ad or a healthy $1600 a month from that source alone.

These are by no means the only way to make money blogging, but they are a good start. Build your money blogging muscles. Write about something you really know well and enjoy. Monetize that blog with ads. Checks will start arriving with increasing regularity. Yes, you CAN become a Blogger Millionaire!



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Monetizing Twitter is What Will Kill It

By Alain Portmann

Less seems more these days. Google AdWords became one of the largest online advertising platforms by restricting advertisers' copy to 95 (25 line 1, 35 lines 2 & 3) characters or less. Twitter has become the fastest growing media platform through a 140 characters-per-message limit. Twitter's internal valuation has reached a staggering $250 million.

Regardless of the hype behind Twitter, one its strengths is the speed at which it disseminates and shares information from the mundane to the highly relevant. Another strength is the simple but effective API that has driven the development of countless third-party apps including TweetDeck, Twitteriffic and Twhirl.

Twitter is nothing more than another attempt to blend real-time communication and search within a social media context. Before Twitter there was Jaiku a Nordic social networking, micro-blogging platform launched in February 2006. Jaiku was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007 and shortly after decommissioned.

There is certainly scope for this type of integration, yet there are those that seem to have forgotten lessons from a decade away -claiming Twitter is a threat to Google and Facebook, (after all Google's search index doesn't keep up with conversations as quickly as Twitter and its user base is growing exponentially). As we learned during the dot-com bust, the value of technology and a user base is not in its ability to become mainstream, but the ability to be monetized. Why? Simple - profitability drives sustainability, R&D and innovation.

Twitter has four options for a business model - advertising, subscription, research and application download.

Advertising. While Federated Media recently announced an advertising revenue share program on Twitter creating programs such as ExecTweets, a collection of tweets from Microsoft executives, advertising will not be well received by Twitter users unless they are really clever about they way they engage this audience - few companies have been able to do so.

The latest attempt to build an advertising model is in the launch of The Discovery Engine brings real-time Twitter search right into the home page sidebar. When a user conducts a search, the results appear there, too, popping up in the big white box instead of on a new page. Users can also track the hottest trends on Twitter at any given moment within the same space. Think of it as Google Alerts for Twitter, built right into the site. The problem is that most people may never even bother discover it. How often do users actually use the Twitter.com interface?

Subscription. While successfully deployed by a handful of community sites including LinkedIn (Personal Plus and Pro), it would be challenging to justify the cost to the average consumer. With established media outlets such as the New York Times and FT.com struggling to make the "pay to consume" model work, Twitter does not stand a chance.

Research. While Twitter could be used to monitor and track the conversation and word of mouth of its user base, it would not only end up competing in a space dominated by aggregation of word of mouth (Technorati, Brandwatch) and more importantly, end up killing the spontaneous and "information promiscuousness" of its user base.

Application Download. Probably the most promising model - based on idea of offering "power users" - mainly those in the PR industry - unique tools and applications at a cost. Yet, this model in itself cannibalizes the concept of equal access and influence, which is so important to social media.

At one point or another Twitter will have to choose between either remaining the Peter Pan of social media or stepping into the world of social media adulthood. The decision is likely to end up killing Twitter.


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Are You an Internet Geek?

By Bailey St James

Are You An Internet Geek? Do you spend hours on the net just surfing around? Do you spend most of your evenings reading or writing on blogs? How about on line games? It reminds me of an old joke. It goes like this.

Signs You're An Internet Geek

10. When filling out your driver's license application you give your IP address.
9. You no longer ask prospective dates what their sign is; instead your line is "Hi, what's your URL?"
8. Instead of calling you to dinner, your spouse sends e-mail.
7. You're amazed to find out spam is a food.
6. You "ping" people to see if they're awake, "finger" them to find out how they are, and "AYT" them to make sure they're listening to you.
5. You search the Net endlessly hoping to win every silly free T-shirt contest.
4. You introduce your wife as "my lady@home.wife" and refer to your children as "client applications".
3. At social functions you introduce your husband as "my domain server".
2. After winning the office super bowl pool you blurt out, "I feel so colon-right parentheses!"
And the number one sign you are an Internet Geek:
1. Two Words: "Pizza's Here!"

Many people really enjoy being on-line and doing the "fun" things on the net. They spend hours and hours on their computers. Then they go to work 10-hours a day 5-day a week, and wish (all the time) they didn't have to.

Many of them might think to themselves "Man! I wish I had been born rich instead of so darned good looking" (RIGHT!) Never realizing they could convert "some" of that on-line time into profitable endeavors.

It's true there are a lot of scammers (on the net) to take all your hard earned money, but there is also a few really good ways to make an honest buck as well. Thousands of folks just like you and me make a good living working with things like E-bay. Some do survey sites. Many even set up their own website and sell their own products.

One of the best ways to get started is to do "affiliate" marketing. With affiliate marketing you don't have to supply your own product. You don't have to build a web site (unless you want to.) You don't even have to collect the payments.
There are 3 simple steps you have to do.

1) You do have to set up a "Clink Bank" account (which is simple and free to set up.)
2) You do have to pick a GOOD product to sell.
3) You do have to promote it.

You don't have to find a mentor to get started, but I did a lot of research and decided to join a club that helped me out a great deal. So, all you "internet Geeks." Stop using all your time and talent just having fun on the net. Make a few adjustments to you on line time and start having fun and (perhaps) make a few (or a lot) of bucks at the same time.


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Blogging Profits

Picking the Best Free Blogging Site and Blogging For Profits
By Danny Elliott


Choosing a free blogging site can feel overwhelming because there are so many options. There are several large free blog-hosting sites that dominate the blogosphere, but there are also smaller sites. Whether you decide to join up with an established site like blogger or whether you choose to sign on with a relatively new venture depends on what your priorities are.

Reliability is perhaps the best reason to opt for a large and well known free blogging site. When you choose to have an established brand host your blog, you can feel secure that your blog will not crash often and will not disappear in the middle of the night. A company that has been around for a while is likely to have the resources to make sure that its clients aren't unpleasantly surprised by any technical glitches. However, many bloggers decide that this isn't enough of a selling point.

The bloggers who choose to go with smaller, newer blog hosting sites do so for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the number one advantage is a fairly abstract one. Bloggers tend to relish the fact that the internet is a place where the underdog has a strong chance of success, and by choosing to have a small company as a blog host, a blogger is casting his or her vote for David against Goliath.

Blogging for Profit Begins With a Long Term Plan

Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging technology. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their blog. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons. Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a realistic plan and stick with it.



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