money

Starting a make money blog is easy. There is a weath of information on ways to make money online by blogging, selling affiliate products and offering services in make money forums. It’s continuing a blog that’s hard.

Blogging for money is a long-distance marathon and many blogs will fall by the wayside after the initial burst of enthusiasm wears out. Finding content that is fresh and relevant for your blog also becomes more difficult as you go on. If you are thinking of starting a make money blog, here are some realities to expect.

1. Content that helps people solve a problem keeps them coming back.

2. Make your blog stand out from the rest – this is one of the most difficult things to do for a make money blog.

3. Blogging takes not only time and effort but also talent. If writing is not something you enjoy, don’t start a blog that requires constant updating.

4. There will be times when you run out of ideas completely no matter how hard you try to find something to write about.

5. Your content will get stolen. Make money blogs are popular targets. It’s just a matter of time before scrapper blogs find you.

6. Don’t exchange links with just anyone who asks. Check out their site first.

7. Give a different perspective on things. There is no point in repeating what all the other make money blogs are saying.

8. Don’t over monetize your blog. Being blatant with ads drives readers away.

9. Make your blog pleasant to read by reducing clutter. Get blogging tips on how to make your posts more reader-friendly.

It’s a good idea to have several sources of income, especially those that are recurring and don’t require constant marketing or maintenance. You will have to experiment and try out different ways to see which methods work for you.

A good balance of ways to find money making ideas comprising of selling affiliate products, providing online services and a make money blog works for many.

Before you start searching for make money blogging sites to exchange links to promote your blog, there are some tips beginner bloggers need to bear in mind. Opinions are divided as to whether link exchanging does more harm than good but the general consensus is that it is no longer effective in getting a higher PageRank or higher rankings in Google search results. However it still has some value in getting targeted traffic to your blog.

Why Link Exchange Could Hurt Your Blog

Link exchanging as a method of blog promotion has fallen out of favour mainly because of abuse by webmasters who practice spam indexing. Spam indexing consists of various methods of deceiving search engines of a site’s popularity by link manipulation. These include creating hundreds of small web sites called link farms to link to a main site to give it a false representation of its popularity.

The quality of the site giving the link is now taken into consideration when ranking is given. So it’s a bad idea to put down cash for seemingly good deals that promise 1,000 links for $10 because you have no control over who links to you. Being linked by an undesirable site does your blog more harm than good.

The more one way backlinks you can get for your blog, the higher authority it will have with search engines resulting in your site getting listed higher in search engine results pages or SERPS.

Apart from using great content on money making ideas and creating linkbait to get one way links and increase blog traffic, there are more direct methods of getting direct one way links. Methods such as buying links from a blog network, submitting your blog and posts to web directories, article marketing and social bookmarking sites.

However, sometimes these methods used to obtain one way backlinks can either end up harming rather than helping your blog or are just useless links. Here are some things to take note if you are using any of these methods to get one way back links.

Buying Links On A Blog Network

1. If you are buying links on a bog network, make sure the blogs are on unique C-class IP addresses meaning they are hosted on different web hosting servers. A large number of blogs that link to each other on the same server will be seen as a link farm.
2. If you are submitting articles to these blogs with anchor text links pointing back to your blog, have the articles rewritten in as many versions as possible since these articles will be viewed as duplicate content by search engines and will harm your blog.
3. Ideally, these blogs should be in niches related to your blog and your anchor text links are “dofollow” links to allow pagerank to be passed on.
4. Another point to note is that adding links gradually is preferable to gaining several hundred links in a few days.

Submitting Your Blog To Web Directories

1. Many web directories have high pagerank but your blog url is listed on a sub-category page which won’t have as high pagerank. In fact many have zero pagerank but it can still be useful to get listed just to increase the number of backlinks.
2. Check to see if the web directory you are submitting to has SEO friendly links. There are several sites which list SEO friendly directories such as here and here.
3. Submitting to web directories generally do not pose the problem of gaining many links too suddenly since many directories take anywhere from 1 to 3 months to include your link.
4. But be sure to vary your site title and description. Many directory submission services allow up to 5 different titles and descriptions.

Using Article Marketing

1. If your main aim is for better SERPs, submit to directories that allow html links with “dofollow” tags or that are SEO friendly. Most online article submission services used for article marketing to increase backlinks allow 3 or 4 anchor text links in the author’s resource box at the end of each article.
2. But these links would be useless if the article directories are not SEO friendly. An example is the largest and most popular article directory, EzineArticles whose html links do nothing for SEO although they are still useful for driving traffic to your blog.
3. Worse still are article directories that remove your html links altogether. If you use an article submission service such as iSnare or Article Marketer, chances are that your article will end up on some of these non-html directories since you have no control over where your articles go.
4. If you are using Firefox, you can install the “Search Status” plugin that indicates “dofollow” links.
5. Alternatively, there are article submission services that submit to SEO friendly article directories although they may cost more on a per article basis.

Submitting Blog Posts To Social Bookmarking Sites

1. Social bookmarking sites are primarily used to increase blog traffic but if the sites allow “dofollow” tags in their links back to your blog, they are useful for improving blog SERPs.
2. Some social bookmarking sites that are SEO friendly can be found here and here.

Submission Services On A Budget

1. Professional submission services can be costly as many require you to subscribe on a monthly basis. So what can you do if you are just starting out and don’t have a big budget?
2. You don’t have to do your submissions manually although many swear that it is the best way since it is slow and adds links naturally. It is also very time consuming if you have many posts to submit. Your time could be better spent on other tasks such as writing articles or blog posts.
3. There are many submission services offered at DP Forums under the “Services” section. Be sure to check out the seller’s rating first or read other people’s reviews for the service before buying.

Article Submitter And Directory Submitter Software

1. Alternatively, you can get your own article and directory submitter software. These software automate many of the tasks such as pre-filling in forms and categories so that submission becomes very fast.
2. The good thing is that you just make a one time payment and the software can be used for as many submissions as you want. Another major advantage is that you can select the directories you want to submit to and build one way links gradually.

Wordpress is the most common publishing software for those who want to make money blogging since it’s free and user-friendly. After installing Wordpress on your web host, there are many things you need to do before adding blog content for your money making ideas. These include getting various plugins, making the right settings for your blog and choosing your blog design.

1. Set Permalink Structure
   Go to “Options”, “Permalinks” and click on “Custom, specify below” and input the options you want. As a guide, have “/%postname%/” as a default. The permalink should preferably include some kind of numerical reference to help Wordpress identify posts since sometimes posts can have almost identical titles.

   A permalink with post title and post number identity:
   /%postname%/%post_id%/

   If you want to include the date, it would be:
   /%postname%/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/

   Try to keep “/%postname%/” in front and permalinks as short as possible to avoid having them cut off in search results. You can find other permalink tags here.

2. Get Wordpress Themes
   There are many places to get free Wordpress themes or designs. You can find more by doing a Google search for “Free Wordpress Themes”.
3. Create Feedburner Account
   Sign up with Feedburner and put the FeedFlare code in your index template. That’s the line of text – Subscribe to this feed. Email this. Add This! Stumble It! – you see at the end of each post. Get the email subscription option code and paste it in the sidebar template of your make money blog.
4. Put An RSS Button
   Many Wordpress themes come with RSS buttons already included but if there isn’t one, get an RSS button and place it in a prominent position near the top. This is crucial for getting RSS feed subscribers who may want to follow your blog.
5. Get Plugins
   Install, activate and configure the following plugins for starters:
   Platinum SEO Pack
   Google XML Sitemaps
   WordPress Database Backup
   Secure WordPress
   Enhanced WP Contact Form

6. Create A Robots Txt File
   Basically, a robots .txt file tells search engine bots which pages in your blog to crawl and index so that unnecessary pages and duplicate content won’t be indexed. Wordpress Org recommends the following robots .txt file:

   User-agent: *
   # disallow files in /cgi-bin
   Disallow: /cgi-bin/
   Disallow: /comments/
   Disallow: /z/j/
   Disallow: /z/c/
   # disallow all files ending in .php
   Disallow: /*.php$
   Disallow: /*.js$
   Disallow: /*.inc$
   Disallow: /*.css$
   Disallow: /*.txt$
   #disallow all files in /wp- directorys
   Disallow: /wp-*/
   # disallow all files with ? in url
   Disallow: /*?
   # disallow any files that are stats related
   Disallow: /stats*
   Disallow: /about/legal-notice/
   Disallow: /about/copyright-policy/
   Disallow: /about/terms-and-conditions/
   Disallow: /about/feed/
   Disallow: /about/trackback/
   Disallow: /contact/
   Disallow: /tag
   Disallow: /docs*
   Disallow: /manual*
   Disallow: /category/uncategorized*

   Just use your notepad to copy and paste the above list and save as “robot.txt” and upload it to the root directory of your blog.

7. Sign Up With Google Webmaster Tools
   Submit your sitemap created with the Google Maps Generator plugin which you downloaded earlier to Google Webmaster Tools.
8. Set Your URL Preferred Domain
   Go to Tools>Set preferred domain in your Google Webmaster Tools and set your domain name either with or without the “www” prefix. Not doing so will adversely affect search engine results and pagerank.
9. Add Content
   If you’re still interested to make money blogging after all that, you can start adding blog content to your make money blog.

There are many more plugins and other security measures you will have to take in order to prevent your money making blog safe from hackers.

f you are not making money with microstock photography, you’re missing out on something that can really be a good additional income stream. It could be your answer to how to make easy money for beginners. Granted unless you go into it full time and at full throttle, the amount earned will probably not be enough to get you that condo, selling photos and images at microstock agencies is one of the few ways of earning you passive income.

Whenever I’m asked what’s the best way to make money online, I always say writing and selling photos at microstock agencies. If you have the talent to write, you can make lots of money without even having a blog or website.

Just go into top making money online forums where there will be a offers thread and list your writing services there. You will get more work than you can handle especially if you are competitively priced. You don’t even have to be an excellent writer since many people need blog posts just to fill up their made for Adsense blogs. As long as you are able to write on a topic or specified niche, you will be swamped. Your earnings are limited only by your ability to churn out articles.

And here’s why I prefer selling microstock photography and images to writing. With writing, you earn with each article or post you write. The earning potential is restricted and limited to one price per unique article written.

With microstock photography, you just have to create the image once and you can put it up for sale – literally forever – without you having to do anything more. In fact, you can put the same image up for sale at multiple microstock agencies. If you are prolific and can produce many images, your income could be quite substantial.

True, the amount paid per image can seem very little. Shutterstock for example, pays $0.30 per sale while for others, it’s $0.50 per sale. But that’s just one image for one sale. You put many images into 5 different microstock agencies and you have a potentially credible source of income. For me, I probably fall into the average microstock earner with several hundred dollars earned a year.

Not terribly impressive but bear in mind that my portfolio is a relatively modest 80-130 images and I didn’t have to do anything more after creating the images, so when it’s several hundred dollars a year for doing nothing, I think that’s not too shabby – it’s one of the easy ways to make money for beginners. In fact, I have been trying to make time to create more images while juggling my other projects. I may have to give up the more time consuming ones like this blog that requires constant new content.

Another thing that’s good about microstock photography is that there’s no promotion to be done on your part since the site is used by targeted traffic. People go to microstock photo agencies because they are looking for images to buy. Your job is to create images that are commercially in demand. Beginners trying to make money selling images often make the mistake of creating images that are not in commercial demand which is the main reason why they have problems making money.

The trick here is to browse through the best selling images and see what subjects sell. You can mostly forget about photos of your pets. Remember, they must be commercial images that are used in articles, blogs, magazines and other commercial media. Put aside your artistic aspirations and concentrate on making images that perhaps a financial magazine might need for its article on the economic downturn or rising oil prices.

If you do decide to go into selling images at microstock agencies, stick with the main ones instead of signing up with each and every microstock agency. Less established microstock agencies have a risk of not being able to sustain its business as was the case with Lucky Oliver which has closed down.

The stable microstock photo agencies to join are Shutterstock, Fotolia, Dreamstime, BigStockPhoto and StockXpert and iStockphoto. There are a couple more that you can also try if you are feeling adventurous such as MostPhotos, 123RF and SnapVillage amongst others. It may be a good idea to try them out by uploading just a handful of images to see if the images sell over a period of time. Remember that a big part of getting sales from making money selling images at microstock agencies is creating images that are in demand.

So you have got yourself a good domain name, found a reliable web host and done all the necessary steps to set up your make money blog. As you are writing content for your make money blog, there are 3 important factors to bear in mind to prevent your posts from sinking into oblivion. Blog marketing is effective only when you succeed in attracting potential readers to your make money blog with good content and turning them into regulars.

1. Keep The Primary Goal Of Blogging In Mind
   The main reason you are writing a blog must be to provide useful information. If you are writing posts with the only goal to make money blogging, you are most likely to fail because your blog will show that and no one will be interested to read it.

   When you are focused on your primary goal to create useful information, the other benefits of promoting your blog come naturally – branding, lead optimization, increased blog traffic and ultimately, money.

2. Maximize Promotional Opportunities Of Blog Marketing
   Articles that are useful and entertaining attract readers and articles that are keyword optimized give better search engine results.

   Using keywords strategically without overdoing it is an effective way to promote your make money blog. Using anchor text links in articles is an effective way to get higher ranking.

3. Don’t Rush Through A Post Resulting In Content That Is Not Useful To Readers
   Often when writing articles, back links, keywords and how much traffic – and consequently how much money we can make – dominate our writing process. Instead of trying to push out as many posts as possible in the hope of getting more links and traffic, it is way more important to ensure quality blog content rather than quantity.

   Readers and publishers are selective when choosing which blogs to read simply because there is such an overwhelming amount of information on the internet. Sometimes, all it takes is one well-researched and written article to get a popular blog with a hundred thousand readers to potentially bring on an explosion of traffic to your make money blog.

It ultimately goes back to the basics of a blog: GOOD CONTENT. Once there is good content, everything else will eventually fall into place and you will succeed in making money online blogging with a niche blog.

Among the best money making ideas for beginners is to use methods which earn recurring income such as affiliate sales. You could achieve this without a blog but blogging about a product which you’ve tried and tested beats any sales copy because of the special connection and trust bloggers establish with their readers.

There are several ways bloggers use to make money blogging:

1. Affiliate Sales
   You can pick a best-selling product from popular affiliate sales site like Clickbank or PayDotCom where sellers list their products and affiliates select products they want to sell.

   How to choose affiliate products to sell?

   Commission rates vary but picking a high price product with high commissions of at least 75% and a low refund rate is a good start. Ideally, you should try the product or read the ebook you are promoting since blogging about something you haven’t experienced first hand would likely result in a post that readers can tell is not genuine.

   Many sites also have direct affiliate sales programmes such as Amazon.

   Pros: High commissions and recurring income if offered by product.
   Cons: Products usually have a money-back guarantee period of at least 30 days which means you will only be paid your commission after 30 days if there is no refund made.

   If a product is a best-selling one, it means many other affiliates are already selling it and the market may be saturated making it hard to get sales.

2. Direct Advertisers
   When you have a fair amount of traffic on your blog, advertisers will be interested to buy advertising banners and text links to place on your blog. You can also charge to write a review for advertisers’ products and services.

   Pros: You get all the money without having to give out any commission.
   Cons: Direct advertisers are not easy to come by so if one does, treat the advertiser like royalty.

3. Paid Reviews And Text Links
   One of the most common money making opportunities for bloggers is by paid blogging. There are many companies that act as a middle man for advertisers and bloggers. They take a commission cut from sales but their service is useful to help bloggers find advertisers who want to buy reviews or text ads.

   These companies include LinkWorth and Text-Link-Ads. Blogs have to meet certain requirements such as PageRank before they are accepted.

   Pros: Ready pool of advertisers provided.
   Cons: Middleman takes a percentage cut from your revenue.

4. Contextual/Text Ads
   Beside Google AdSense, there are many other companies that provide contextual-relevant text ads which are automatically sent with a code placed
   in your blog template. Another text ad company, Bidvertiser lets you pick the advertisers you want for your blog. They are more suitable for beginners because minimum payout is only US$10 compared to US$100 for AdSense which is much harder to reach.

   Pros: Easy to implement – just copy and past the ad code and no need to bother with it anymore.
   Cons: Unless you have fairly good blog traffic, you may not get many people clicking on the ads. Revenue is usually very slow.

There is no reason why you cannot try all the methods to find out which ones work best for you. In fact, you should try them all more than once as your blog changes and grows over time. For some, make money selling affiliate products work best while others find success elsewhere.

Different bloggers will report varying success with different methods so don’t be put off by reading someone’s post that AdSense doesn’t work or get angry when a recommended method flopped badly for you.

It will take time to work out an income strategy that works for you but the most important task to make it work is to have good blog content. Without good content, there can be no blog traffic and non of the methods have a chance of succeeding.