How People Make Money Blogging - Part 2 of 2

What Are Blogs Really?

Blogs are often simply personal thoughts, written by people who would like to hear from other people who have similar ideas. They can be little more than a history of a family growing up, or of vacations that people have had. They can be about literally anything in which humans are involved, from pet care to astro-physics.

Making Money With Blogs

What are people doing to make money with blogs? Typically, they choose a subject that they are interested in (or preferably PASSIONATE about) and in which they are quite knowledgeable, and they start writing about it. Businesses, ALL business, are little more than people offering products or services (or both) to other people. When the offer is accepted, trades are made; it’s that simple.

What Can You Sell On A Blog?

But what could be sold via a blog? The honest answer is “pretty much anything”. How is this done? Typically, a good blog demonstrates the author’s expertise in a certain area. It could be horse-grooming or computer-science; whatever it is, when people find your blog, they are almost always looking to GET something.

The Offer

To actually make money blogging, you have to offer the same thing; products or services.  But, just like a retailer with a shop, you can offer OTHER PEOPLE’S PRODUCTS.  To find products related to your blog, which your readers would be interested in, you can go to Clickbank.com or Commission Junction.

Kinds Of Products

Here you’ll find an array of both digital (videos, pdf books, audio files etc.) and physical products that you can promote for a very high percent commission.  If your reader clicks a link on your blog and proceeds to buy the product, you make money.

Amazon.com

You can even display Amazon.com books and sell those if you wish, though the percentage commission is much lower.

What Are Your Readers Looking For?

Always remember that your readers typically want a SOLUTION; that is, they are looking for a solution to a problem that they currently have. It could be a medical condition they have, or it could be instructions on how to repair a vehicle. Whatever it is, they want to get something, and often it is little more than information; but very SPECIFIC information that will help them solve their problem.

New To Blogging?

Most new bloggers expect people to find their website quickly and start commenting immediately, but alas, this is not how it works. You could write a three hundred word post each day for months and not get more than a handful of visitors to our blog. Why is this? There are lots of reasons, but two come readily to mind.

Search Engines

Firstly, if you don’t really understand the subject you are writing about, you will not be using the right terminology (otherwise known as “jargon”) in your posts, so the search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo will not find your posts. That’s not exactly true; the search-engines WILL find your posts, but they will index them in such a way that people SEARCHING for solutions to their problems will be typing different keywords into the search-engines, so will find OTHER people’s websites.

And……..

Secondly, if you rely totally on the likes of Google and Yahoo to find and index your blog, you are missing out of potentially thousand of readers, because you can do MANY more things to drive visitors (otherwise known as TRAFFIC in the internet marketing world) TO your site. So, instead of being passive and hoping for the best, you actively go out and look for potential readers. This article is a good example of just ONE way that you might get people to visit your blog.

Blogging can be a very satisfying thing to do in its own right, without making a living from doing it.  But if you can do something you really enjoy, AND can make money doing it, you’ve reached a point in your life that only the elite few ever achieve.

Luke.