With the phenomenal growth of net, many streams of making money blogging have come up. One of the most popular medium of Blogs.
A Blog is a Web Log, where users with common interest of issues form an online community and share their views, experiences and offer advices to other users or comment on any discussion if they want to.
The Power of Blogging:
Amongst the online community of chatters, blogs are new voice of authority and may we say that for some issues, even replacement to print media on million different issues where any user can get advice from online community, faster and from wide array. Here online community does contribute to share their knowledge.
With the rise in popularity of Blogs there is sharp rise in blogging sites too. On any topic that you may chose, there would be hundred other blogs having loyal and captive audience. Therefore, before starting a blog chose your area of expertise, where you can contribute with some authority or can moderate on the subject. Study all the blogs on the subject chosen and research how you can have at least one feature better than them, so that users may find something new in your blog. For beginners, the choice of blog could be sporting event, musical activity, current topics, reviews of products and services etc.
How to make money with blogging:
Initial setup days for blogs are not easy. Getting visitors to your site is a Herculean task. Here content is the key. Initial setups are known to solicit new bloggers to join for a variety of payment or incentives. Concentrate on the uniqueness of content.
Blogging can offer you money in two ways. You can either setup your own blog or join some existing blog which offers you money for content or where you can offer your advice for a fee. As the awareness is rising, many bloggers are using it professionally to create an alternate income stream. Some people have built their reputation writing on their blogs that they are known to be charging as much as $50 per hour for writing on blogs.
If you plan to setup your own blog and make money blogging, you could earn from ads. Earlier the ad income opportunities through blogs was limited to adsense now there is a large array to choose from as Kanoodle, adknowledge, search feed, RSS feed etc. You can also earn through affiliate programs like linkshare, clickbank also.
Another way to make money blogging is to sell your merchandise as T-shirts, coffee mugs on your site. Some sites as www.cafepress.com are doing this, however so far, blogging is generally sharing of thoughts, opinions and advice. Sale of merchandise through blogging is yet to catch up, however, if you wish to sell merchandise through your blog, Amazon.com offers a good choice where the product list can change on each page view, keeping that content fresher, and providing a service in helping your visitors find related products.
Blogs are generally free and do not carry any memberships fees. Only established blogs can afford to charge membership fees. Some useful and fast coming up blogs do accept donations.
Costs of Blogging:
From a friendly community at start up time, established blogs of consultants have started charging for their advise on the blog Starting a blog does carry some costs in terms of hosting fees, programming fees, software if you need any, advertising your blog, and of course cost for giving initial jump start to your blog. Some bloggers have employed internal staff members to populate the blog and others give on line ads who and promise to pay if you write for them.
Quality Content
It does not mean that money comes easy through blogs. A blog is a community web site that requires constant tending, because you are the host of people coming to your web site. You have to maintain your visibility some times to moderate a topic or for dispute resolution, should a occasion for the same arise.
For a blog to be successful, meaningful content is must to retain visitors. Every post you write is bound to add or subtract the reputation of your blog. Before starting a blog do checkup the area of your expertise where you can share your knowledge with others and chose a nice domain name. If you start a blog, do not be impatient to add something meaningless just for adding, better let blog skip the day.
Must Read – Are You Blogging for the Wrong Reasons?
Optimize your Blog in the Search Engines. Success of the blog is a measure of how many unique visitors come to the site, how many page views a visitor does, length of stay of a visitor and how many visitors use RSS feed from are utilizing it.
As a blogger you have to retain the audience as captive, loyal and sticky. You have to ensure that they get what they are looking for, only then they would return to your blog.
