Make Money From Home Blogging

How great would it be to be a professional blogger?

The answer to that question is…pretty freaking great!  Now I would not know first hand yet, but I can only imagine.  In fact, I do imagine… a lot.  I constantly envision myself living the lifestyle of a professional blogger.  To be a professional blogger and make money from blogging means:

• Unlimited income potential.  No hourly wage or salary wage.  You earn by monetizing your blog and then bringing traffic to your blog.  Your pay will be based on how well you run your blog business.
• Work for yourself. No boss to tell you what to do, fire you, yell at you, and no one there to treat you like garbage.
• Work wherever you want.  Tour the world and make money while you sit on the beach, relaxing and sipping on a cocktail (or cocktails ;))Your office is wherever there is an internet connection.
• Work whenever you want.  Blogging allows you to earn passive residual income, which means you are still earning from past work even when and if you do nothing and decide to take some time off.
• You have more free time.  More free time means more time with friends and family and more time to do the things you want like golfing, skiing, boating, camping, or whatever it is you do.

Those are five of the best reasons why I am working hard to make money from blogging. The professional blogger lifestyle is not a lifestyle for everyone, but it is certainly appealing to me and to many others.  If you think a blogging lifestyle may for you, here’s a step-by-step to help you get started.  You may want to bookmark this page for further reference.

How is it Possible to Make Money From Blogging?

This is a question I asked myself a long time ago, and there are actually many ways to make money from blogging depending on what niche you are marketing to.  So lets start with step 1:

Finding Your Niche:

Find a profitable niche that interests you.  Preferably one that you feel well versed in and one in which you can sit down and spend a good amount of time writing on.  A subject that you are passionate about will help you make money from blogging.

To find a profitable niche you will need to do some research.  You’ll want to look for some keywords that you can use to land you plenty of visitors from the search engines.  Use a free tool like the Google Adwords Keyword tool to help you with the search.  Look for about 5-7 keywords that get searched on a minimum of 75,000 - 100,000 times a month, combined.  If it does, you have a popular niche in which you can make money from blogging.

Choose Your Domain Name:

Time to find a name for your blog.  This will be the url or web address of your blog; i.e www . yournamehere . com Don’t spend too much time here.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  Use something that people will remember and will be easy to type in if they were to search for it.  Many people choose a name that includes their main keywords to help them with keyword rankings. That’s not required and probably wont make that much of a difference.

The cheapest and best place to sign up for a domain name is Namecheap.com.  I’ve used them several times with no problems.  I think it’s like $6 to sign up.

Find a Host for Your Blog:

There are many choices when it comes to hosting.  Most of which are free or pretty cheap.  DO NOT sign up with a free host no matter what!  If you do, you lose all your chances to profit from your business.  Free hosting will limit you to the amount of traffic you get, what you promote, and how you promote it.  They will also most likely promote their own interests and monetize those interests on your blog by sticking unwanted banners and ads anywhere they like.

I’m sure there are plenty of valid hosts worthy of recognition here, but the only one I recommend is Host4Profit.  Their services are top notch…seriously.  If you ever have a question or concern, email them and you will have a response in under 10 minutes.  I don’t know about you, but that is important to me.  Especially when running a business.  You can never be too careful when selecting something as important as a provider who’s business it is to host your entire operation on their computer.

Take my advice and stick with Host4Profit.   Only $24.95 a month.

Upload Your Blog:

Once you have your domain and host, all you have to do is upload your WordPress blog.  This requires some ftp knowledge as well as setting up a SQL database.  If you don’t know how to do this, and you have signed up at Host4Profit through this page, I will do it for you…no cost.  Just send me an email at MattHelphrey @ gmail . com (without the spaces) and Ill reply back asking for a few pieces of information.  It shouldn’t take me more than 10 minutes to set it up.

Make Money From Blogging by Getting Traffic to your Blog:

To make money from blogging you need to entice readers to your blog first.  You can do this by creating killer content.  Content that visitors may share or spread the word about because it is so good. Killer content usually comes in the form of written material i.e. informative articles, “how to” posts, “top 10″ lists, etc.  But killer content would also include free software, links to other sites, access to “privileged areas”, and/or any other freebies you may provide.

Once you have killer content provided on your blog, you need to promote it and let people know what you have to offer.  There are plenty of free ways to promote online.  Some free promotion methods include article marketing, blog commenting, posting in forums, press releases, email marketing campaigns, traffic exchanges, and directory listings.  You can pay for traffic by promoting ads in ezines, running a pay-per-click campaign, or purchasing leads for an email marketing campaign.

It is best to use promoting efforts that you are skilled at.  The best advice I can give is to document your advertising efforts to be sure you are getting optimal results.  Once you perfect one thing and become very proficient at that, you can rinse and repeat the same success.

Make Money From Blogging by Monetizing Your Blog:

Depending on your niche and what you are offering, you can make money from your blog using several methods.  Some blogs will make money using one method, others two or three, and others will monetize a hundred different ways.

The simplest and most popular ways are through pay-per-click programs like Adsense, where you get paid a certain amount every time someone clicks on one of their ads on your blog.

You can also promote affiliate products and programs and get paid commissions every time you sell.  This method is easy because it does not require you to produce your own product.

Monetize your blog through pay-per-lead companies.  There are companies who offer pay every time you provide them a lead through one of their links on your blog.  This can be as low as .50 or as high as hundreds of dollars depending on what it is they need.

Offer advertising spots on your blog.  You can charge monthly rates for sponsors who are interested in advertising their products or services on your blog.  Usually you get paid more the more traffic you have.

Create your own product.  This method can prove to be the most profitable.  Especially if you offer it as an affiliate product so others can promote it as well.

The last method I will mention to make money from blogging is through an email marketing campaign.  Just put a sign up form on your blog and offer something of value.  People will sign up and once they do, you can market anything you want to them as long as they stay on your list.

Conclusion

There you have it!  All the information you need to make money from blogging.  Of course it doesn’t happen without constant action and the desire to make it work.  By picking up many back links to your blog, posting to your blog on a regular basis, and using relevant keyword terms in your posts, it is impossible not to succeed. Constant action will lead to constant traffic, and constant traffic will lead to money in your bank account.

Wish you the best,

Matt Helphrey

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