How To Start A Blog For Profit

Before you just start creating content you need to know how to start a blog for profit. You need to think through what you want to do with your blog.  Do you want to sell from your blog or just put out free content for a website you have.

There are also blogs that people use just express themselves.

An online presence is important these days for whatever enterprise you engage in. To connect with a wide variety of people there is no bigger forum than the Internet. If you are looking for a way to show off your expertise and also make a little money while doing it, consider starting a blog.

What is a Blog?

A blog is actually an online journal of sorts. With a blog you can upload daily posts about anything that you want. Some people create personal blogs as a way to keep in touch with family members. Pictures, videos and other information are uploaded so your loved ones and friends can stay current with what is going on with you.

For our purposes here we are going to talk about building business blogs. This is a blog that you use to attract online traffic in order to sell products or services. To be interesting to others, your blog will need to:

•    Have updated content for visitors
•    Show your personality
•    Stay on topic

How To Start A Blog

 

If you are new to blogging, you can use a free blogging platform to get your feet wet. Sites like Blogger.com and WordPress.org and others offer free blogs to users. Depending on the site you choose, the themes and plug-ins (added features) will vary. Most will walk you through the process step by step so that you can be up and running in no time.

Before you start your blog, decide what will be the theme, or niche of your blog. A jack-of-all-trades type of blog doesn’t do as well as one that is geared towards a certain niche. If you like crafts for instance, that can be your niche.

Anytime you develop a blog or website after deciding on your niche you need to come up with a list of keywords you will use. There are many tools both free and paid you can use for this.

Next I suggest you come with 25-30 possible titles for your posts. Be sure to include your keywords in the title. This helps with SEO and lets your readers know what the post is about.

Create posts that talk about how to craft, what to craft, how to make crafting profitable and so on.

How to Make Money With Your Blog

In order to make money with your blog, you need to have people visiting it. This is where you have to use your marketing skills. You can buy traffic or get free traffic. To GET traffic you have to get the word out about your blog.

Most people do not understand how much traffic you need if you hope to make money with your blog. If you go the free route you will need to spend several hours a day on just marketing to get any decent traffic to your blog.

Don’t expect much traffic for months if you only want to get free traffic. That is unless you are working full time on your blog.

There are several ways you can blog for profit.  Most newbies start with google adsense on their blog. It will be awhile before you have enough traffic to make much money with adsense. I use it on a few of my affiliate sites.

I think the biggest check I have ever received for adsense was $176.00. Google adsense sort of died out but has been making a comeback lately. I started reading a book on adsense by Joel Comm this month. He is the guru of adsense I guess you would say and his new book is like getting a PHD in how to use adsense.

Most people use their blog to sell affiliate products like I do here. The key is to find products you have used and really believe in. The biggest mistake you can make is to try and sell something you know nothing about.

There are to many crap products out there.

You can also sell your own information products you develop on your blog. That is my next step and I think everyone should strive for that if you really want to develop a business.

You can also sell advertising on your blog. To do this you will need to show you have a pretty big following on your blog. Especially if you are not a big name in your niche.

I have a niche website in a sports niche where my competitors are making money by selling advertising such as banner ads. To a lesser extent they are selling physical affiliate products from places like Commission Junction.

I am selling the physical products on my site but I don’t have enough traffic yet to sell advertising space. It’s a very competitive niche and you need high traffic to compete.

Hopefully in the next 2-3 months I will get the traffic I need with some new traffic sources I am working on.

This should give you a good primer and some things to think about before you start your blog. I hope this article helps you with how to start your blog for profit.