photo credit: Betsssssy

Making money from blogging isn’t something out of a fairy tale story; real people are making good money with their blogs right from home! Taking your writing hobby to the next level and turning into a money-making endeavor is something that anyone can do, with lots of time and effort of course. Here are some tips for getting started and what to do.

Set Up an AdSense Account

You can make a little extra cash on each blog site you own that is hosted on Blogger.com (or your own domain) and you have it set up to be monetized (Google AdSense appears on your site and you get paid for the clicks you get). You can do this by starting a blog site at Blogger.com and then going to your dashboard and clicking the “Monetize” link in the center right of the page.

The great thing about Google AdSense is that Google searches your posts for keywords on each page and then serves ads to it based on the keywords they find. This helps you in the end because your readers are already interested in that topic and by having the ads follow the keywords, you’ll get more clicks. It’s a win-win for everyone! AdSense pays for clicks only.

The blog should be about something in a certain niche for best results, yet be popular enough that people are searching for those items or information online. For example, a blog about pets is good, but a blog about teacup breeds is even better. The people who will find you online are specifically interested in that niche and will be more likely to click on those targeted Google ads that appear on the side of your blog. On the other hand, if you want to get paid on the actual sale of the product being advertised, consider affiliate marketing with your blog site.

Try Affiliate Marketing on Your Blog

Promote other people’s products on your blog by doing affiliate blogging. In other words, by blogging you’ll help get the word out to readers and Internet surfers about your affiliate marketing partners’ sites. Using the above example again, if you had a teacup dog products and informational site, rather than housing your own warehouse of products and doing the selling, exchange of money and the customer service…you could blog about the various breeds, products that fit their small frames, keep them warm, health issues and the best foods for them, etc.

Each of your blog posts would point to your affiliate marketing site pages and people will be more likely to buy from those sites because they see you as an expert in that area. Some sites do not allow affiliate links in their blogs (check each site’s user agreement), so buy a domain name and install Wordpress onto your site and then you own it and can put whatever you want on it! Blogger.com IS affiliate marketer friendly, though…so go for it! One excellent example of an affiliate marketing site is www.MrBreakfast.com.

Affiliate Linking IS Allowed Here

One site that is especially affiliate-friendly is www.Hubpages.com. You can create a Hub on their site about anything and include 2 links to your affiliate merchant’s site. The user interface is super easy to use and it is robust in that it allows you to add capsules for pictures, videos to be embedded, polls, RSS, and so much more. Think about starting a Hub that centers around one specific topic and then write to your heart’s desire. As you gain reader confidence in the information you provide, readers will try clicking on your links and see what types of products you’re promoting. From the reader’s point of view, you are an expert in that topic and someone they can trust.

Next time, we will take a look at other ways to monetize your blogs and affiliate articles and whether or not it’s worth it to do this. Until then, keep on blogging and making cash!

____

Kim Virrueta is the owner of EggStream Marketing, a site that provides Internet Marketing plans and services to women business owners. For a limited time, she is offering one free web page to any woman owned small business.