How to Become a Profitable Blogger

Blogging has become a popular and highly effective way to make money online, and/or provide information to people on a subject that you are passionate about discussing. Starting a blog is a fairly easy process; however, making money from your blog takes some planning, patience, and hard work. There are a lot of broke bloggers out there and I assume you don’t want to be one of them. Making money with a blog is not nearly as easy as most people think.

So, what does it take to actually build a profitable blog?

The first thing needed to become a profitable blogger is a good subject matter, also known as a good niche. Blogs that do not have a single theme of topics tend to fail because they do not often attract a loyal following of like-minded individuals or high search engine rankings for various keywords within a niche. The best subject matter to start a blog with is something you are experienced with and have some knowledge about. Everyone has a talent so it shouldn’t be too difficult to find a blog topic. The blog subject can be a hobby you have, you could start a local blog, write about something you love to do, share your expertise on a popular topic, or even blog about something you are learning about currently. For example, a new mom could write about her experiences learning how to be a parent (although this particular subject has already been done to death, it’s still a good example of a blogging niche).

Once you have your subject then you need to find a good domain and blog host. Get your domain from NameCheap. It’s far better than GoDaddy and pretty much every other registrar I’ve ever come across, and I’ve use a LOT of them. As for hosts, there are a lot of them out there but I normally use either HostGator or Bluehost. They are very popular, relatively cheap, reliable, and give you everything you will need to get your blog going.

For beginners, a free blog may be tempting, but I do NOT recommend them as your main site. There are many reasons for this and one of them is because you don’t actually own the site/blog so it can be taken away from you at any time, and it limits your options for what you can do with it. However, if you insist on taking the free route then three popular options that are easy to use and start with are blogger.com, wordpress.com and tumblr.com – although I personally prefer blogger because it’s run by Google, super easy to use, can be easily dropped if your niche doesn’t work out, and many internet marketers like to use it.

Once you are set up with a domain and host, and you have your niche picked, it is time to start writing. For a popular blog, it is recommend that you post a minimum of at least once a week, but that isn’t set in stone. You can do more or less. Quality is far more important than quantity! Also, the most important thing you can do is build up your social networks and promote your blog in various ways to get lots of inbound links to it. This will increase rankings, traffic, followers, and eventually earnings.

Now, as soon as the content is flowing and you are starting to get a good following, it is time to monetize your blog. Making money blogging entails a variety of things. The three most popular revenue streams are Adsense, affiliate marketing, and selling advertising.

Affiliate links are a form of advertising within your blog. This is typically done in two ways, through a banner ad or direct links from words in the text of your blog. Adsense is a Google advertising product that is code inserted into your blog allowing Google to link websites into your blog based upon the content and theme of the blog. Clickbank and Commission Junction are two of the most popular affiliate companies on the web today. Their client lists include many popular retailers. Selling advertising spots is pretty self-explanatory. Basically you just allow other website owners and businesses in related niches to pay you for ads on your blog.

Making money blogging is easy in terms of the technology used and income streams available. Anyone who feels comfortable in front of a computer writing about a certain topic should have no problem developing a good blog. The keys to making money blogging are picking a profitable niche, providing high quality content, building a following, and getting enough backlinks to attain high search engine rankings.

Put it all together an you will have yourself a profitable blog. You can then collect the money monthly or flip your blog for a large one time profit.