Bloggers R Us

Copyright © Dennis Koray

http://www.myfortuneformula.com

PROBLOGGING: MAKING MONEY FROM BLOGS

A weblog (or simply blog) is a website that ‘publishes’ or features articles (which are called ‘blog posts’, ‘posts’, or ‘entries’), written by an individual or a group that make use of any or a combination of the following:

· Straight texts

· Photographs or images (photoblog)

· Video (videoblog)

· Audio files (audioblog)

· Hyperlinks

Usually presented and arranged in reverse chronological order, blogs are essentially used for the following purposes:

· Online journal or a web diary

· Content managament system

· Online publishing platform

A typical blog has the following components:

· Post date -the date and time of the blog entry

· Category – the category that the blog belongs to

· Title – the title of the blog

· Main body – the main content of the blog

· RSS and trackback – links the blog back from other sites

· Comments – commentaries that are added by readers

· Permalinks – the URL of the full article

· Other optional items – calendar, archives, blogrolls, and add-ons or plug-ins

A blog can also have a footer, usually found at the bottom of the blog, that shows the post date, the author, the category, and the ‘stats’ (the nubmer of comments or trackbacks).

There are numerous types of blogs. Some of them are the following:

1. Political blog – on news, politics, activism, and other issue based blogs (such as campaigning).

2. Personal blog – also known as online diary that may include an individual’s day-to-day experience, complaints, poems, and illicit thoughts, and communications between friends.

3. Topical blog – with focus either on a particular niche (function or position) that is usually technical in nature or a local information.

4. Health blog – on specific health issues. Medical blog is a major category of health blog that features medical news from health care professionals and/or actual patient cases.

5. Literary blog – also known as litblog.

6. Travel blog – with focus on a traveler’s stories on a particular journey.

7. Research blog – on academic issues such as research notes.

8. Legal blog – on law (technical areas) and legal affairs; also known as ‘blawgs’.

9. Media blog – focus on falsehoods or inconsistencies in mass media; usually exclusive for a newspaper or a television network.

10. Religious blog – on religious topics

11. Educational blog – on educational applications, usually written by students and teachers.

12. Collaborative or collective blog – a specific topic written by a group of people.

13. Directory blog – contains a collection of numerous web sites.

14. Business blog – used by entrepreneurs and corporate employees to promote their businesses or talk about their work.

15. Personification blog – focus on non-human being or objects (such as dogs).

16. Spam blogs – used for promoting affiliated websites; also known as ‘splogs’.

Blogging is typically done on a regular (almost daily) basis. The term “blogging” refers to the act of authoring, maintaining, or adding an article to an existing blog, while the term “blogger” refers to a person or a group who keeps a blog.

Today, more than 3 million blogs can be found in the Internet. This figure is continuously growing, as the availability of various blog software, tools, and other applications make it easier for just about anyone to update or maintain the blog (even those with little or no technical background). Because of this trend, bloggers can now be categorized into 4 main types:

· Personal bloggers – people who focus on a diary or on any topic that an individual feels strongly about.

· Business bloggers – people who focus on promoting products and services.

· Organizational bloggers – people who focus on internal or external communication in an organization or a community.

· Professional bloggers – people who are hired or paid to do blogging.

Problogging (professional blogging) refers to blogging for a profit. Probloggers (professional bloggers) are people who make money from blogging (as an individual blog publisher or a hired blogger).

Below are just some of the many money-making opportunities for probloggers:

· Advertising programs

· RSS advertising

· Sponsorship

· Affiliate Programs

· Digital assets

· Blog network writing gigs

· Business blog writing gigs

· Non blogging writing gigs

· Donations

· Flipping blogs

· Merchandising

· Consulting and speaking

The following are a few things that you need to consider if you want to be successful in problogging:

1. Be patient. Problogging requires a lot of time and effort, not to mention a long-term vision.

2. Know your audience. Targeting a specific audience or group is a key to building a readership.

3. Be an ‘expert’. Focus on a specific niche topic and strive to be the “go-to” blogger on that topic.

4. Diversify. Experiment with various add and affiliate programs that enable you to make money online (aside from blogging).

5. Do not bore your readers. Focus on the layout. White spaces, line spacings, and bigger fonts make a blog welcoming to read.

Certainly, it is possible to earn money from blogs. One just needs to take risks, the passion, and the right attitude in order to be a successful problogger.

It’s easy to make money from blogs. There are all kinds of programs, affiliations available to make money from blogs, in fact, even easy money.

What is a blog?

Blog is a personal space, rather a personal diary, with the difference that it is not a closed diary but one that is open to anyone to walk in and read and leave a comment. There are various types of blogs, some are business blogs, and some are social networking blogs. Some blogs are personal some are professional but most of them have a theme on which the contents are based. Creating a blog is easy, even a child make a blog.

Types of blogs

Comment blogs are the ones that offer comment on events in the writer’s life. It takes a subject or incident and makes a comment which the reader may be interested in. Comment blogs often substitute for newspaper editorials. Needless to say they are a combination of news and opinions. Blogs are tools in the hands of writers to keep in touch with each other and also to inform the world about events in the writer’s life. Recently, there have been instances of bloggers updating the world about events in countries that have undergone political change, when no other traditional media was allowed to cover the events.

The other type of blog is filter blog. Filter blogs are similar to comment blogs but point to other locations within the internet for articles and have minimum of content, and more of links. Owners of such blogs can be requested for links to sites, for a fee, of course. You can make money online using these blogs.

You can opt for any of these types to make money through blogging. Most blogs such as blogger.com and wordpress.com are free to subscribers and you can easily create a blog in a few steps and earn good money.

Creating a Blog

Blogs are easy to create on Blogger.com and wordpress.com. There are other blog creation sites such as typepad, and MSN’s live.com. It only takes a few clicks to create a blog. Have a name that is appropriate to the theme of your blog so that they will show up in search engine results and it can also impact your ranking on search engines. For example if your blog is about mobile blogging have a name such as mobile-blogging.blogspot.com. Do not combine the two words, i.e., don’t create a blog with the name as mobileblogging.blogspot.com. It’s a better strategy to use the former to let search engines find your blog.

Promoting Your Blog

First of all submit your blog to the major search engines before you can earn money from blogging. Slowly, your traffic will build and you can paste a visit counter to check the progress of visitors on your blog. Also send a link to your friends and extended contact lists to visit your blog and link to you. When the number of links of your blog increases, so will your popularity and your rating with the search engines. Keep promoting your blog without let up.

Apply to Affiliate Programs

When there is a constant flow of visitors to your blog everyday you can start the process of earning money from your blog. First apply to affiliation programs which pay money to feature their ads on your blog. After registering with them copy and paste their code in the appropriate sections in your blog. Affiliate programs pay per click or pay if a sale is made through a click from your blog. So choose your affiliate program wisely.

Register with Google Adsense

Google runs their advertising program on websites and blogs which is called Google Adsense. When you register with Adsense, Google supplies you with the code that you can copy and paste on your blog. Once you do this you can track your blog’s performance by registering on Google’s analytical tool – Google Analytics. This free analytical tool will analyze the number of visitors to your site each and also give you the demographic data of the visitors.

Do not give up. As the popularity of your blog grows, both traffic as well as ranking on search engines can only become better. So the more popular your blog the more will be your revenue from Affiliate programs and Adsense.

Most importantly, if you are seeking to make money from blogging, spread your interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Some Good Money Making Affiliate Sites:

www.google.com/adsense

As mentioned above, Adsense is Google’s advertising program and when featured on your blog can bring you revenue when a visitor clicks on the ad links. If you place the adsense code strategically on your blog then you can get more clicks. It should be right at the top of the blog, and preferably at the top right hand side. Also you can choose an ad size that is prominent enough to display it prominently on your blog.

www.amazon.com

Amazon has an affiliate program that includes products like books, CDs, office products, household products, etc. It also has a contextual advertising program in which you have to place a code in your page and all words on your page that has association with Amazon products will turn into a link. This has more chances of making money as the reader is directly reading content relating to the advertisement, and therefore has a greater chance of clicking on the ad.

www.register.com

Register.com is a website that is in the domain booking and related services realm. It has an affiliate program by which their ads can be featured on blogs and the blogger can earn referral income. For more details read the affiliate page on the website.

www.g2bux.com

Though G2bux doesn’t have an affiliation program it rewards members with G2points which can be converted into cash when it reaches a certain limit. Users can find tens of ways to make money online on G2bux. It is a good site to make money from and offers a number of modules through members can earn money. Registration is free and is open to all.

www.ebay.com

Ebay.com also has an affiliate program in which bloggers can become a member. Ebay is a popular site for buying and selling used and new products and your visitors would certainly be interested in the products for sale on the site. Visit ebay.com for their affiliation program and sign up if you think it will work for you.