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Blogging is turning out to an addictive past-time for a lot of people around the world. Apart from being a great medium to express your feelings and experiences, blogs can turn into alternate means to earn some quick bucks.
With recession rocking the boat and intermittent lay-offs and salary cuts - why not make some extra money through blogging. You need no special technical knowledge or literary abilities to start a blog. Here are ways in which you can earn money while blogging:
Pick a topic that you love
The basic rule of blogging is to choose a topic close to your heart. It's best if you love something other people also love, such as sports, politics, or celebrities. Amar Upadaya, a programmer at a leading blogging website says," All blogs have the potential to create revenue, but the popular ones are those which are informative or related to one’s life experiences”.
BLOG TIP : Prithik Agarwal, who blogs at a google blogging website and earns a minimum of four figures per month, cautions against being overly narrow in focus. "Instead of picking a niche topic like diet tips, where there's only little you can write on, pick a general way of looking at life or an area of interest that you're passionate about," he says. Agarwal blogs on personal growth, which encompasses relationships, finances, career development, and spirituality. Successful bloggers always stick to the theory that "content is king". It holds particularly true if you hope to earn by blogging. Ensure that new content is contributed on a regular basis. And this can always be possible when the topic of your blog motivates you to write on a regular basis.
Build up traffic
Your blog will not make money if no one finds your blog! Your ultimate goal should be to achieve a high ranking in the search engines. So try and build traffic to your blog or make your blog accessible to a large number of readers so that people visiting your blog can increase. The basics involve writing quality content, and updating the content on a daily or weekly basis. The best way to promote your blog is by joining a blog network such as blogadda, technorati , blogarama, buzzerhut, blogcatalog, etc. A blog network website helps bloggers by highlighting and promoting their blog to millions of users all over the world. You can consider a blog network, which is a platform where millions of users can view your blog with other similar blogs. In technical terms it is the search engine for bloggers. You don't have to pay anything to submit your blog to these blog network websites.
BLOG TIP : Shilpi Bhatnagar, a regular blogger explains, “Joining a blog network and gaining a strong following through that network is the best ways to build blog traffic. Initially when I start blogging I always found it difficult to get good traffic to my blog, but after submitting my blog to various blog network websites I could get 10,000 page views per day”. To calculate the amount of traffic coming to your blog, Google and other websites provide a solution. Google-webmaster, mypagerank, trafficonblog etc are some websites that calculate the amount of traffic generated by your blog. You just need to register on these websites to can check your traffic details on a daily basis.
Advertisements
Once you are able to get a good amount of traffic to your blog, you can proceed to the earning strategies. The most obvious way to make money through blogging is with advertising. Advertisers pay a few cents when an ad is clicked upon. Or, they may pay a certain rate for each 1,000 page views.
BLOG TIP : The most famous advertisement method for most bloggers is Google Adsence Google ads are usually the first foray of new bloggers into the world advertising. Easy to use, they only provide a fraction of income to sucessful bloggers. Lucrative deals come from advertisers who pay a good deal of money for displaying there ad on your blog. Some of them are AdBrite, AdGenta , BidVertiser etc. It's easy to get ads on your site, but difficult to earn from them. You'll need thousands of visitors each month.
Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs are again good methods of earning money through a blog. Affiliate programs are similar to advertising. But in affiliate programs you are paid directly by advertisers for placing a banner ad or a text ad on your site. Here people can also earn by putting affiliate links inside their blog posts. You may get paid when a visitor clicks an affiliate link. But usually, visitors must make a purchase from the affiliate.
BLOG TIP : Earning money from affiliate programs is more difficult, but if it works you could earn ten per cent or more, per product user buy through your blog. Amazon, ebay, commission Junction, linkShare are some of the websites that are leaders in the affiliate programs. You can recommend books or other products available for purchase from other sources, and earn very generous sales commissions when your visitors buy those products.
Pay-per-post
Some companies will pay you to write about their products and services on your blog. Your pay varies depending on your blog and the traffic generated on your blog. There are many websites available on the Iinternet that can pay you handsomely for writing reviews of their products. Some can even pay you up to $1,000 per post. If you have a good traffic coming into your blog then you can easily join any of these company websites. Some require you to blog for a month or more before enrolling. Or, you may need a specific number of posts or site visitors.
BLOG TIP : Not all bloggers are willing to get paid to write about a specific product or website, but the ones who do can make good money. Some of the websites which offer such opportunities are PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews, Blogvertise etc.
Job Boards
All the popular blogs have job boards to generate extra income. A job board is some sort of an advertising board which you place on your blog and advertisers post job opening on that. But to create an active and profitable job board you need to have a blog which generates a large amount of traffic.
BLOG TIP : Guy Kawasaki, ReadWriteWeb, Problogger etc are some of the websites that can help you to create job boards on your blog.. Once you have the structure in place, the job listings come naturally, and you can easily earn $10 to $100 for each job you post on your blog.
Paid Surveys and Polls
Bloggers can also earn money by running polls and surveys on their blogs. There are many websites that pay you money to run a small survey or poll on
your website. The most popular one among them is called Vizu Answers.
BLOG TIP : You need to sign up with them, and select the kind of polls that you want to run your site. It’s free of cost and you are paid handsomely if your blog generates a huge amount of traffic.
Sponsorship
You can easily get a sponser for your blog , if you are able to make name for yourself in the world of blogging. Most of you must have heard of fakeiplplayer, who garnered a huge amount of publicity and traffic by writing a blog on cricket. To cash in on his publicity many companies offered him sponsorship. Sponsorship works like an advertising deal. However, your entire site will carry the company's branding and you may be forbidden from mentioning competitors' products and services.
BLOG TIP : Landing a sponsorship probably won't be easier than finding a paid position. And remember that you will need to make a name for yourself first, only then will companies will come forward for sponsorship.
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