subject: Blogging For Profit - How Passion Can Fill Your Pocketbook
[print this page] If you are really, really passionate about something, be it cooking, politics, auto repair, fly fish lures or even worm farming; you can turn that passion into profit with a blog. Blogging for profit is a relatively new phenomenon but it's growing fast thanks to two things. Access to the internet is now truly global and still growing bringing in millions of new users each year. Add to this huge market, blogging platforms that are SEO friendly and don't require any technical skills to run and you have a perfect mix for a passionate blogger to be heard.
And here's the really cool thing. You can do this and make a couple of extra bucks a month or you can replace your day job. It's really all up to you and how much you want and how much time you have to devote to it.
And I was serious about blogging about any subject. When you have an audience in the billions there are at least a few people out there who have the same interest as you do. For example did you know that the phrase "worm farming" is searched over 12,000 times a month? Worm farming, go figure. So the lesson here is whatever your interest there's a way to get visitors and if you can get visitors you can make some money.
So how can you do that? Well it really depends on what your motivation is. If you look at the blog as a hobby, something that you really enjoy but don't want to put more than a few hours a week into, and it'd be nice to make some extra cash each month but you're not counting on it, then running simple to install contextual ads like Google's Adwords or Amazon's network is probably the best bet.
With AdWords Google will run text ads that are closely tied to the text on the page. When a person clicks on that ad you get paid. It may not be much or it could be substantial, it all depends on the subject of your content. If you're blogging about pharmaceuticals for coronary patients you're going to get Adwords that pay more because they are very competitive. If your subject is dog training, not so much.
With Amazon your visitor has to click through and actually buy something and then you get a commission. The plus side of these two is that they are fire and forget. You put them on the site and then never have to touch them again. The down side is there isn't a lot of money to be made.
If you want to get serious about blogging for profit there's a couple of things you need to do. First you're going to have to learn a little search engine optimization. If you're using Wordpress for your blog this is already done for you. You'll have to learn basics for keyword research so your articles will rank in the search engines and drive traffic to you.
But most importantly, you have to deliver that passion you have for the subject. You have to provide that visitor with value. You want them coming back again and again.
One way to do that is give away free information using an auto responder program. Put together a little 4 page report and tuck in onto a password protected page. Then offer it to your visitors in return for them giving you their name and email address. You email them the URL and the password and bingo, you have the start of a list and the money is in the list.
Using that list you can send more good information and become a trusted source. You can also provide links to products you have or promote. This is where the money really is.
Just always remember that blogging for profit does not mean your ultimate job is marketing. Your ultimate job is to give value and build credibility with your visitor.
