12.5 Steps to make at least 150$ a month with your blog
Since I’m a bit at the point of ‘been there, done that’ I’m writing this post, with the bits of research I hope I’ll get a hold of some extra ‘tips & tricks’ as well to help myself in this business, besides that I’ll surely also help others and hopefully increase the popularity of my own blog, which is no more than necessary on ‘the road to success’. I’ll stop throwing with clichés now and start writing some real content!
12.5 Steps to make at least 150$ a month with your blog, the kick-off: some info and my experiences
My experiences with sponsored or ‘paid’ blogging are nearly all positive, it might not always be easy to get a hold of good opportunities to write about, but when you do it’ll provide you with both content for your website and nice profit to finance your hosting, domain, coffee and whatever you decide to spent the money on. As you could read in my January Recap, I’ve made more than 300$ in 26 days myself, which isn’t bad at all for something I consider to be nice to do. Sounds interesting? Well, after you’ve read this you should be able to do the same with your own weblog!
Getting started
#1, Setting up your weblog. As this point is no doubt the most important one, it’s advisable to take it into consideration before you choose one of the two options available. The easiest option of the two is to register a weblog with a provider such as Blogspot, Myspace or TypePad. This option has the advantage of not having to pay for hosting or a domain name, which will save you about $10 a month. If you pick this option you simply go to one of the sites listed, or one of the perhaps hundreds of others and proceed to step 5.
Choosing for a free hosted weblog also has three major drawbacks, which I’ll explain here: An increasing amount of advertisers isn’t interested in free weblogs as they don’t appear to be very serious; how trustable is a person that is making money by advertising or blogging while he or she doesn’t even bother to get his or her own hosting? The second negative aspect of this is that you are depending heavily on the rules of your provider; you never know what they might do with their policy or account. The most recent example of this is the sudden change in policy on Wordpress.com; from one day to another bloggers weren’t allowed to put up any kinds of advertisements on their blogs. If something like that happens to you, you’re cut off from your source of income and your blog might even risk deletion; losing all your previous work.
#2, Picking the right domain name. The internet is full of tips to pick the right domain name, a lot of them contain good info, but it’s not all required; just pick a name you like and that is easy to remember then everything will be alright. Personally I mostly use GoDaddy to find a nice domain name or to register one as it’s one of the leading registrars; it’s even one of the cheapest while still offering a lot of functionality. Don’t register the domain you’ve chosen yet though – some hosting providers offer a free one with your hosting package.
#3, Finding hosting. This is perhaps the most difficult task; there are hundreds of web hosting companies on the web, all offering slightly different services with different pricings. I’d advice one of Dreamhost’s packages to those who start now, their hosting starts at $9.95 a month and come with a free domain name and a whole lot of space and allowed traffic. Besides their nice offers they also have huge discounts, you can get up to $97 discounts by reading their forum and entering the code with your order making the first year cost only about $25. For experiences on web hosting you can always look on Google or WebHostingTalk, with these two sources you can usually filter the real bad ones out. Keep in mind, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
#4, Setting up your weblog. Also a difficult step, using your hosting account and setting up the required things shouldn’t be too hard; they’ll be more than glad to help you with it. The hard thing is though to choose the right software. There are loads of packages available for free or a fee on the web, Wikipedia has a list with the most popular ones available as well. I’d advice everyone to go with Wordpress though as it has all the required features with it, tons of plugins and themes are available for free as well which makes it easy to customize your blog to your likings.
Creating your identity
#5, Customizing your weblog. This step is highly optional but recommended. It’s optional because a lot of weblog engines already look ‘ok’ out-of-the-box and will be fully functional. It’s recommended though because the look of your website is part of its identity, if you have a nice look people will easily remember your website and might even return more likely. Just look on the website of your software for more information on how to do it, or use the links above in case you’re using Wordpress. A little side note; I really recommend you to look into spam protection as well. As soon as your blog becomes popular you’ll no doubt face spam – I’ve received 70 spam comments in the past three days – but my Wordpress plugin ‘Akismet’ blocked all of them.
#6, Finding your ‘niche’ subject. Because weblogs that stick to one subject and go deeper into that one, or write a lot about one specific category, become more popular it’s quite a decision to make. Of course you can be successful without a specific subject, it might be harder to do so. Also keep in mind that not many people like to read what you did at 2PM, who you talked to at 3:06PM and that your dog barked when the phone rang on 4:13PM, so picking a subject that is interesting to a lot of people will also make it easier to promote your website!
#7, Continue blogging. This might sound easy, but it isn’t always: people – and search engines – like weblogs and websites that are updated frequently, so for both your visitors and your search engine ranking; make a deal with yourself on how many posts you’ll be making every day or week and stick with it! Trust me, it works.
Spreading the word
#8, Let the world know you exist! Okay, perhaps a little disturbing title, but the concept is simple; submit your website to as many search engines, free web directories and blogrolls available! This way people and search engines will discover your website or weblog easier; without visitors no high ranking which doesn’t help to get a nice income. A few websites to get you started:
How do I add my site to Google’s search results?
Live Search URL Submission
Submit Your Site to Yahoo!
Major Search Engines and Directories
Search Engine Ranking Factors
#9, Use pingbacks. Using manual search engine submission forms for every blogpost you make just wont work. Because of that there is another thing available on the web, the ‘XML-RPC Pingback protocol’, often just named ‘pingback’ on the blogosphere. All this does, explained simple, is tell the server you’re contacting that you’ve written something new and that they should come and take a look. Blog search engines such as Technorati will then check out the data you’ve written and include it in their database. Below you can see a couple of Pingback services that will let all the big guys know you’ve written something new. Since there are a lot of big to medium guys on the blogosphere, it’s better to use these macro-submission sites than to ping all 50+ of the sites individually – it’ll save a lot of time!
Simply enter the following servers in your admin control panel, at the options under ‘Pingback’. For Wordpress you can find it under ‘Options’ -> ‘Writing’ -> ‘Update Services’, you can remove the preset values.
http://rpc.pingomatic.com
http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc
http://ping.myblog.jp
http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
http://bblog.com/ping.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
Besides that there also is another usage for it; letting other bloggers know you’ve written about their website, the so called ‘trackbacks’. Most blogging software does that part automatically, such as Livejournal and Wordpress which removes the worrying for you. The advantage of a trackback is to let the blogger you’ve written about know that you did so, allowing him or her to link back to you, as well as letting the readers of the article you wrote about know you did so – they might come and take a look, which means more visitors for you!
#10, Promote your weblog or website even more. Right now social bookmarking websites such as Digg, Reddit, Del.ico.us and StumbleUpon are growing a lot in popularity. These websites allow you, and others, to submit articles to them that are considered worth reading, sharing it with others that way. If you wrote a nice article the best thing you can do is giving it a kick-start by submitting it to these websites, supplying an interesting title and description and waiting for the visitors to come and take a look. Even articles that do not hit the frontpage are often good for at least twenty visitors, giving you a little jump forward.
Besides these ‘new media’ there are still the good old forums and of course other weblogs. These sites nearly always allow you to post comments and leave your signature. By doing so you’ll generate a lot of back links for yourself, which might turn into more visitors as well as a higher Google PageRank – essential for high paying advertisements.
The real work
#11, Apply for PayPerPost and a-likes. As you’re looking for a way to make money online, submitting your website for approval to the sponsored post websites around is a must-have. So far PayPerPost(aff) has shown to be the most interesting website for new blogs because you can post up to 3 opportunities every day, nearly guaranteed due to the big supply by their big list of customers. LoudLaunch is another site that might be interesting, it’s a lot smaller than PayPerPost but this also tends to help by approving blogs and posts very quickly, in addition to that they pay out in only 14 days, making it ‘quick money’ compared to PPP’s 30 days. ReviewMe is another website that is interesting, but on this site the advertisers will have to pick you. Their requirements to join are high making it uninteresting for new blogs, if you manage to get in you will most likely be surprised by the high prices – join when you can.
#12, Start posting for money! You can pick one, or choose all of these websites, wait till you’re approved and start collecting the income! Make sure you read their policies though, they’re all very different but might hurt your little business if you fail to follow them. I’d also recommend you not to post too many low quality posts within a short period for two reasons: your posts will be rated and you might scare visitors away. The higher your Alexa rank and Google PageRank are, the more you’ll be paid so it’s important to keep your visitors happy as well.
#12.5, Go back and read steps 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 again. It is important you stick with your subject, continue to link to other bloggers and make contacts, this way you’ll continue to receive back links and will continue to grow. It’s important to keep your PageRank and Alexa high as your opportunities will depend on it. On the PayPerPost forum you can find various people who are willing to link to your weblog for a link in return, make sure you use those offers, links are priceless. As soon as you’ve managed to rank higher on various aspects you might also want to consider putting advertisements up on your website, use them sparingly though, else you’ll scare visitors away.
Bottom-line
If you follow these steps you’ll no doubt start making money, I cannot guarantee you any amounts – it’s all about your own ’skill’, creativity and focus in the blogging business. This guide has worked out for me very well though, right now I’m making 15$ a day average by just writing on my blog, doing what I like to do. Found this very useful? You can help me by adding this article to your favourite social bookmarking website, linking to it from your blog, posting a comment, advertising on this website or simply by continuing to read my website – thanks! (Side note: I do not use ‘nofollow’ on this website for comments& trackbacks older than 24 hours so comments and trackbacks will give you a free linkback from a PR4 website, good for your own ranking!)
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