There are a large number of searches monthly online about how to make money blogging. Blogging is one of the first things that come to mind when people look at ways to make money online. A successful blog can be an invaluable tool for marketing and online sales to make money online. There are a number of different business models you can use with a blog to make money online. If you build a successful blog with a large regular readership you have a large pool of potential customers. Let’s look at some ways you can make money blogging, and what you need for a successful blog.
- Google Adsense- This is usually the way most beginning bloggers begin to make money from their blogs. You simply ad the code to your blog and let Google serve ads to your readers. Each time a reader clicks on an ad you make a small amount of money from the total Google charges the advertiser. Realistically, you aren’t going to get rich from this method unless you have thousands of visitors to your site.
- Affiliate Marketing- With affilate marketing you place ads on your site from advertisers you have an affilate marketing agreement with. These can be sites like Amazon or Ebay, or they can come from affilate marketplaces such as Clickbank. These can more lucrative as some affilate advertisers will pay you 50% or more commission on each sale.
- Drop Selling- As a drop seller you can set up an e-commerce store on your blog and using the blog to promote the products in your store. You collect the orders and then send the order to the drop shipping company along with the wholesale cost for the item. They handle all the stocking of inventory and shipping for you. Your profit comes from the difference in the retail price you charge the customer and the wholesale cost of the item.
- Subscriptions- You can offer your readers a monthly subscription to access members-only content on your site. You just need a lot of good content and you need to be able to offer value added content to your subscibers.
- Selling a service- You can even use a blog to sell a service, such as web design services. This is one of the methods I use with this blog. I offer my SEO article writing, web design and blog set up services from this site.
- Social influencer- If you become big enough on social media many brands will ask you to review or recommend them on your blog and social media sites.
Getting Started
Running a blog is hard work. But then again, so is any business you decide to start. If you are thinking you can throw up a few lines of text and make thousands of dollars, then this is probably not for you. On the other hand, if you aren’t afraid of some hard work blogging may be just what you are looking for. To get a blog up and running may take you two weeks to a month of hard work. But think about it; after you get the blog set up you will be doing some work writing content and marketing, but you can make money while you sleep.
You can even outsource the writing of content. There are many writers just like me who will be happy to write articles for you on the subject of your blog, and charge you a nominal fee for fully search engine optimized articles. These articles can fill your blog with content and get you higher rankings in the search engines. Contact me if you need SEO article writing services.
Setting Up a Blog
Setting up your blog requires a little bit of planning, but is relatively straighforward. If you have some computer skills you can probably do this yourself.
Your first step is to choose a domain name. Go to a service such as GoDaddy to search for and purchase a domain name. Once you have your domain name you need a web host. A web host is where you will rent space on a server for the files that will make up your web site. I use Hostgator for my web host. You upload your files to your web host and your site becomes live on the internet.
Next you are going to need a content management system. Luckily many webhost have a way set up to automatically install WordPress on your site. WordPress was created for blogging so it is just right for beginning bloggers. Also many web sites are being designed on WordPress now due to it’s flexible platform. You can read more about WordPress here. WordPress will allow you to create a website in minutes rather than months, it will manage your files and it will look highly professional.
*Disclaimer- I don’t receive any commission from the companies listed abov. These are just the services I use.
WordPress is actually used by some of the biggest brands on the planet for their websites. It is far from a begginers tool for building a blog or website. However, it is user friendly so even beginners can set up and start adding to a blog in a small amount of time. WordPress also has tone of plugins that can assist you with doing anything you want with your blog, from building an email list to fully functional e-commerce store plug-ins.
WordPress also has a large community of users and developers who can help you out if you need assistance. This will make your life much easier should you ever run into technical difficulties with your blog.
So if you are serious about working to make money blogging you have some options. In order to make money blogging you will definitaly have to put in some work. This is not a get rich quick type of business. Although you have the ability to build your blog into something that can make you substantial money of you put in the time and learn the ropes. So if you feel you want to give this a try, you can definately make money blogging.
If you just aren’t sure you have the technical skills to get a blog set up feel free to contact me. For a minimal investment on your part I can set you up a blog and teach you how to start your blog right after setting it up. Contact me for details.
