Make Money by Blogging - just be realistic about it

Oh boy! We can make money by blogging, right? Well, that's right, you can make money blogging, but you have to temper your expectations with a little reality. If fact, how about a whole bunch of reality from the voice of experience?

Yep, I've done it and I continue to do it, so I have some insights about what you might expect. I don't have many years of experience, but I have enough to shed some light on the subject.

So let's do it. Let's shine a light on the subject of blogging and the subject of making money with that form of online business. Let me highlight the main areas that you need to know before you try to make money by blogging.

• You need a hot topic for quick results. Even if you don't have a hot topic, at least you need a topic that is in demand. It's just like any other web-based business, you need to know what people are searching for and then build the web presence to serve that interest.

  If you start a blog about the entertainment industry, American pop culture, the lives of celebrities, or a blog about how to make money by blogging, you're sure to get someone's attention. These are all hot topics and will likely stay hot for a long time to come.

  The key questions to answer are, "What do you know about these subjects, and are you sufficiently versed in them to create regular blog entries every few days?" Ah...just as I thought, so let's move onto the next bit of reality.

• To get the "viral marketing" working in your favor, you need to do something remarkable on your blog so others will want to tell the world about it. Look at some of the most popular websites in the world - Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, Twitter, EBay, MySpace, Craigslist, Flickr - they have all created something exciting, and that's why they've risen to the top and stayed there.

  It's not reasonable to expect that folks who want to make money by blogging will necessarily have to create something as special as these top sites, but your blog can't be a yawn either. It needs to be interesting, robust, meaningful and memorable - just for starters.

• You must have talent when it comes to writing and other key aspects of this communications oriented media. It isn't necessary, nor desirable, to write like William Shakespeare or William Faulkner, but you need to have a good command of the language and enjoy writing. Some people are good writers but they have to work hard at it - that's no fun at all.

  Others enjoy writing but stumble around sufficiently to be a distraction to the reader. You don't want to distract or annoy your readers, you want to attract and retain them. That means you must have consistently good writing skills.

• Regardless of the topic or quality of writing, you'll need to put "time in service" to make money by blogging or any other web-based enterprise. You need to take the long view on any online business simply because it takes time to build it, promote it, and get search engines and visitors attracted to what you've created. If you're looking for a target, set your sights on about 5 years.

  Any of the websites that have high traffic volume and good revenue have been around for many years. Very few of the new entries online hit it big quickly. I know it would be great to get rich quick, but from my perspective, if I can make a good living in 5 years, that's plenty quick enough for me.

• It's a time commitment that some people just can't handle. When you think of a blog, it's an interactive web presence. It requires that you write, moderate comments, respond to visitor comments and manage the rest of the business aspects of trying to make money by blogging. It can be done as a part-time endeavor to start with, but if your blog starts hopping, you'll need to be a regular shepherd of the blog and your "flock" of visitors.

So, yes you can make money with an online business like a blog if you have the right combination of time, talent, topic and tenacity. Blogs cost next to nothing to set one. In fact, you can setup several and work them all for just the cost of an Internet connection and a personal computer.

Keep in mind that hundreds if not thousands of new blogs are created each week. It's a big competitive world out there, so you need to be ready to be a good competitor. And, that means knowing about today's Internet and keeping up with the latest stuff out there so you're not left behind.

If you're still not scared off, then you might want to explore Internet business ideas to learn more about this approach to making money and see what, if anything, excites you and could be a source of excitement for others.

Done with Make Money by Blogging, back to Making Money