Share This Story, Choose Your Platform!
Is there real money to be made in blogging? You bet there is. The Huffington Post, at its heart a blog site, was bought by AOL in 2012 for $315 million, according to JeffBulas.com. And while it’s true that around 81% of bloggers never make more than $100 total from their blogging efforts, a full 9% made enough in 2012 to pay their bills and sustain their lifestyles blogging 4 to 6 hours a day, as New York Times reports. There’s no doubt that authoring a blog can be creatively fulfilling, but it can also be lucrative. To increase your chances of getting into that money-generating 9% bracket, follow these tips:
A Solid Foundation
Do you love your topic? Is it something you eat, sleep, breathe, and would write about even if you didn’t make a dime? If yes, then you have a shot at an income-producing blog with longevity. If no, rethink your topic.
1. Quality Content, Hosting and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Your writing should be as creative, impactful, and error-free as possible. The more appealing your blog, the more other bloggers will want to link to you, and the more money-generating advertisers will want to partner with you. Business Insider identifies the most influential blogs as those that offer something truly unique, eclectic or funny, such as insider information, a refreshing point of view or impactful personal stories. You should also choose a web hosting service you can rely on. The resource, webhostingbluebook.com provides an overview along with ratings of the major web hosting choices.
2. Some of the basics of SEO (as Webhosting Blue Book outlines):
• Killer keywords. Identify and use the top-searched keywords for your main blog topic. Google Analytics is a great tool for this. Use your top keywords naturally and organically throughout your blog, about twice per 500 words of content. Use them in blog titles, tags and meta data (the code embedded in your web pages) as well.
• Quality connections. Link to at least two other high-quality websites within each post.
• Diverse content. Embed relevant YouTube videos, images and infographics in your posts; search engines seem to love rich, diverse, multi-media postings.
Traffic
Get your content in front of more sets of eyes. Submit your posts to blog communities like Blogcarnival.com. Spread the word via social media. Tell your friends and family.
Making Money
1. Pay Per Click
Include ads on your blog and get paid — it’s that simple. According to their sites, Google AdSense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Bidvertiser and Chitika eMiniMalls will all pay you a commission whenever one of your readers clicks on one of their ads.
2. Custom Search
Add a Google AdSense-generated Google search box to your site, and you’ll get paid if a viewer clicks on one of the ads that come up in their search results.
3. Donations
Use PayPal to add a donation feature to your site to appeal to altruistic readers.
4. Affiliate Programs
Signing on with affiliate programs are a great way to earn commissions on products sold. Amazon, ClickBank and Commission Junction are among the top-paying, according to their bragging rights.
If you do not know how to design and set up your blog, get help from a professional
WordPress Website & Blog Development
WordPress is a powerful and flexible open source software that is the best blogging platform available. It is highly customizable and there are thousands of developers constantly creating new plugins, widgets and software upgrades. With the proper customization, WordPress is very search engine friendly especially if you are using WordPress to it’s fullest potential and write regular posts.
Another great use for WordPress is as a content management systems (CMS). We design complete websites in WordPress which allow you to integrate your blog and website and you or your employees can edit or add pages from any web browser. We developed the website you are on right now in WordPress and it’s very easy to maintain from anywhere in the world.
You can choose from thousands of available WordPress themes and we can install and customize for you so it matches your company branding or we can create a custom theme from scratch to fit your needs. We can also install and implement plugins and widgets too!
