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If you use the Internet, you have heard about blogs. In this article, I am going to show you what it takes to start your own blog and make it successful enough to quit your day job and become a full-time professional blogger.
Blogging is a relatively new concept, though it has already become an integral part of the Internet. A few years back, most people used blogs as an online journal detailing personal opinions and experiences. Recently, though, blogs have taken on a commercial aspect and focus on a large array of topics. Today, most of the blogs which earn a significant income from advertising are similar to print magazines. They publish fresh content and the home page is constantly updated. Each article published in a blog is called a post. Readers can leave comments on posts which are similar to “letters to the editor” in newspapers and magazines. Most blogs are maintained by a single author, but there are also newspaper style blogs which have multiple authors. Articles are arranged in chronological order and arranged based on categories. One major advantage that blogs have over print magazines and newspapers is that older articles can be accessed with just a few clicks or a search feature. It is the ease of finding and consuming information which makes blogs such an appealing information gateway.
Do You Want to Be a Professional Blogger?
Today, almost anyone can become a blogger. Free blogging software and services are readily available at sites such as Blogger.com and WordPress.com. These sites enable people with no technical knowledge to start a blog of their own. Such services work well if you are posting a few articles a month as a hobby, but they are not suitable if you are looking to generate a full-time income from your blog. This is because free blogging services do not give you full control over your blog. If you are motivated to earn income from your blog, you should register your own domain name (like yourblog.com) and host it on a shared or private server. A professional blog requires several tweaks and add-ons depending on the topic, which is only possible in a self-hosted blog. Another advantage to owning your blog is that, apart from the income generated, the asset value of your blog continues to accumulate. This means you could potentially sell your blog for a hefty price after a few years. On the other hand, a free blog hosted at Blogger.com (with a URL like yourblog.blogspot.com) has no resale potential.
There are numerous tools, techniques, and coaching programs which enable you to create your own self-hosted blog even if you have no technical knowledge. For now let’s assume that you have set up your blog with your own domain and hosting. Is that enough? Definitely not! There are several more factors which determine the success of a blogger.
Delivering Great Content
Most people who start a blog with the dream of making it big fail because of one reason: they choose the wrong topic. Choosing the topic of your blog boils down to the two primary factors of passion and opportunity. Money comes as a reward for your blogging efforts, but it should not be the primary reason why you blog. Usually it takes a very long time, sometimes even a few years, to make a substantial income from blogging. If you are not passionate about the topic on which you write, you will soon lose interest and give up blogging.
For example, if you are interested in motorcycles, you would already have gained knowledge about motorcycles through magazines, journals, and TV shows. If you were to start a blog about motorcycles, it would be quite easy for you to produce content. You will not only enjoy sharing your ideas with like-minded people, but enjoy the added benefit of the income from your blog.
The next important factor in choosing a topic is the market opportunity. For example, if you are passionate about the topic of motorcycles, but someone else already has a successful motorcycle blog, then there is a good chance that you may never overtake them (unless your content is very unique and you spend a massive amount of money marketing your blog). A good strategy to adopt in such a case is to subdivide the topic into smaller segments and pick one topic from these options.
For example, motorcycles can be divided into sport bikes and cruiser bikes. If you find yourself more interested in sport bikes, you can create a successful blog on this subtopic. You may write about the latest sport bikes in the market, including your personal opinions and reviews of specific bike models. People who are specifically interested in sport bikes will become regular readers and recommend your blog to their friends. When the topic of your blog is very focused, you have the power to charge more on advertising because advertisers get the opportunity to target their prospects. For example, a company which sells spare parts for sport bikes will find your blog more appealing than a general motorcycle blog.
The Internet is quite young and blogging has been around for less than a decade. The number of people who read blogs is considerably less compared to the overall number of Internet users. Even if you choose a topic in which only a few people are interested, you will eventually build your traffic because even more people will be using the Internet in the coming years. When you have established your blog as an authority on a particular topic, you will have no problem earning income. Some blogs may take a few months to reach a very good income level and some may take a few years to achieve the same level of success. In the end, every professional blog is going to generate substantial income because of the phenomenal rise in the number of Internet users.
Traffic: The Lifeblood of a Blog
Let’s assume that you now have a self-hosted blog with high quality content on a unique topic. Even now, there is no guarantee that you are going to make money. The key is getting people to visit your blog. You can afford to spend money on advertising if you are selling your own product through your blog; however, if sponsors are your only source of revenue, you should educate yourself about the various methods of getting free traffic.
When you have established free traffic sources for your blog, the number of unique visitors will increase month after month. This leads to a steady increase in your blogging income without an increase in your efforts. However, if your blog gets visitors via paid traffic, it will not increase with time unless you spend more money on advertising as you go. Hence, paid traffic is not a sustainable business model unless you can also secure some direct return on investment from your blog.
The biggest sources of free traffic for blogs are search engines, especially Google. You should educate yourself on how to optimize your articles for search engines so that your blog shows up whenever people search for related information. When people find your blog posts to be useful and informative, they will link to your blog from their blogs or refer it to their friends. Once this process goes on for a considerable period of time, you will enjoy compounded growth in terms of traffic and financial gain. But if your content is not good, no one will spread the word about your blog. That is why choosing a unique topic and creating high quality content with your knowledge and experience always comes before traffic building.
Every skyscraper has a deep foundation; every big tree has a well organized root structure; and every successful blog has high quality content. Driving traffic to a blog which does not have useful content is like constructing a building on loose soil; eventually it is going to fall.
Make Money with Blogging
Once you have set up your own self-hosted blog, created quality content, and secured good traffic, you are ready for the final step: making money from your blog. There are several ways to make money from your blog, and I am going to outline the major ones here.
Contextual Advertising: If the topic of your blog is very broad, contextual advertising will work well for you. Contextual advertising involves signing up for an account at an advertising network and placing banner codes within your blog. The advertising network will consider the content of your blog and serve ads which are relevant to that content. You will earn money from the advertisements either based on the number of clicks the ad receives or based on every thousand impressions. Most ad networks serve a combination of both, and their algorithm will decide which type of ad will produce the maximum revenue. The most widely used program for contextual advertising is Google AdSense. They have a vast inventory of advertisers and pay the highest compensation compared to other contextual ad networks. However, the network will charge 20 to 30 percent commission for their services.
Direct Sponsors: If the topic of your blog is very focused, direct sponsorship is a good choice for you. When you have a targeted audience, you can charge a high rate to your advertisers. They will be happy to pay since they will be getting a good return on investment by advertising to targeted consumers. An advantage of direct sponsors is that it cuts out the middle man, meaning you will not lose a percentage of your earnings to the ad networks.
Basically, there are two ways by which you can charge your advertisers. One is CPM (cost per mille), which means you charge the advertiser for every 1000 ad impressions generated from your site. CPM ads work well for big companies which are also looking to brand their product, company name, or service, and are not just looking for visitors to their website. The second type of advertising is CPC, which means you charge the advertiser based on every click. If the advertiser is simply looking for visitors to their website, they will prefer this option. You can manage banners in your blog with the popular open source solution, OpenX.org.
Paid Reviews: Another good way to make money from your blog is through paid reviews. A paid review is basically a blog post that an advertiser pays for. For example, if an advertiser has launched a new product or service that people are unaware of, paid reviews are more effective than banner or text advertising. The readers of your blog will be more likely to read your article about that particular product as opposed to visiting their website. Advertisers have found this technique to be very effective for creating a buzz about their product.
You can find advertisers who are willing to pay you for reviews on networks like ReviewMe.com, SponsoredReviews.com, and PayPerPost.com. Usually your job involves writing an article of about 200 words regarding your opinion of the product or service. The amount of money you earn for each review depends on your blog popularity and traffic, the topic of your blog, and the availability of advertisers in your market. For example, one of my blogs in the automobile niche which had a page rank of three, 1500 RSS subscribers, and an alexa ranking of 92,000 earned $40 on average for each review.
Selling Text Links: Selling text links is similar to selling banner space on your blog. Advertisers usually buy text links from your blog to improve their search engine rankings. Ad networks can also help in this area. Some of the prominent networks in the industry are Text-Link-Ads.com, BackLinks.com, and LinkWorth.com. Recently text link ads introduced a new concept/feature called in-line text ads. In this feature, the text links to advertisers will appear in between (or in the middle of) your articles. All you have to do is sign up for an account on text-link-ads.com and get your blog approved. Then advertisers will be able to advertise in your blog. You will be paid by text link ads every month as long as your earnings are above the minimum payout threshold.
Affiliate Marketing: You can use banners, text links and review articles to promote affiliate products in your niche. Affiliate marketing is the major source of income for many professional bloggers. To learn more about affiliate marketing refer to this article on BusinessAttitude.com: The Basics of Making Money with Affiliate Marketing.
