Blogging Blueprint

I was thinking how I can help others to start earning money with their blogs. I know that many people wonder how it is actually possible to do this and in this article I want to shed some light on the issue. There are two possibilities for two different groups of people. First we have the group that already have an existing blog and have been blogging for a while. Whether they blog about working from home opportunities, their hobbies, animals, shopping, travel…it doesn’t matter. And then there is the second group of already established bloggers with blogs that have been crafted for months. Blogging is a craft, so why not monetize it?!

When you blog, you need to do this regularly, if you are thinking of monetizing your blog. At least 3 times per week. Preferably you will want to blog more than that. As you probably know, search engines do love blogs. This has to do with the fact that when you update a blog, the search engine spiders will know this as they visit (crawl) your site and because you ad fresh content, they will keep ranking you higher and higher. The content has to be related to what your blog is about, otherwise the engines might see your content as spam and will penalize you instead. Always make sure you stay true to your blog. For example, writing freelancers use their blogs to showcase their work and find new clients or are found.

In my case I blog mainly about anything to do with working from home, affiliate programs, writing and blogging for pay. Sometimes I do accept a paid blogging assignment for other companies such as insurances or even other non related stuff. But I am very careful not to overstep the line for two reasons. First, I want to stay true to my blog and second I don’t want to upset my readers by writing about non related stuff too often.

The best way to write a blog is if you own the domain. This is by far the safest option as nobody can shut down your blog for whatever reasons. If you blog with blogger for example you can always run the risk of getting penalized and loose your whole blog. Luckily blogger is owned by Google so they allow us at least to use Adwords on the blogs. When I first started out blogging middle of last year I used the free wordpress.com version. I then moved on to various blogger blogs only to arrive on this home owned wordpress blog on my own domain. Despite having to start from scratch again when I switched, it was the best thing I could have done. I will never go back to writing a regular blog on a free platform. But that’s just my humble opinion.

So now we have the groundworks set of what blogging platform to use and how often to blog, we need to get serious and maintain our blog for a minimum of 3 months before we can even think about monetizing it. Most blogging networks that pay bloggers to write require an established and well maintained blog to participate. This is where you can make or break it. Get creative and blog. If you are not happy writing about the subject and if you are not familiar with it, you might find it tough going and probably waste your time. It is in my eyes imperative that you are passionate about your blog, your blog entries and anything to do with your blog, such as promotion, styling and all things related. Just write about your interests, hobbies, work, business. The more you can associate yourself with the general topic of your blog, the easier it will be to maintain it in the long run. Very rarely I see blogs these days that have been maintained for 6-12 month with anything less than a page rank 4.

You need to do this for the long term and plan ahead. Don’t expect to hit the big stuff early on in your blogging adventures. Keep at it and you will see it pay off. Once your blog is 3 months old, start applying with the various networks that pay bloggers. (Update: you will lose page rank if you chose to do this. I strongly recommend you stay away from these platforms now ! They are all free to join and upon approval you will be given blogging assignments for pay. The bigger your blog’s exposure - audience - pagerank - age, the better the pay will be. That’s where the long term plan will come into effect. You are better of looking for freelance writing jobs online.
It lies with getting your feet wet, putting your name onto the map (Internet) and getting enough exposure to land some great freelance blogging jobs with great pay. Once you get into those, the world will be your oyster. You will gain recognition in your market and attract more and more blogging assignments.

Those networks are a fantastic way to get started in monetizing your blog. Once you know the potential of money to be made with blogging, you can step further towards your blogging success.