The answer to the above question is yes - but a reserved yes! It’s not an instant or easy process, and you have to persevere through some lean times initially and some possible shake-ups later on. My own story: For the first two years of this blog, I figured there was no way to really make money from blogging without changing the character of my blog. So I didn’t try. I felt smug that my blogging was “pure.” Although I had installed Google Adsense and let it remain, it was only making me about $6 - $8 a month - if that. The first year of my blog, I rarely had more than 100 site visitors per day. Although my traffic increased the second year and I started having 200 - 300 visitors per day, it was still not enough to significantly affect my Adsense earnings.
Then a couple months ago, when I thought about the time I spend on blogging, I decided to try again to monetize my blog. However, I wanted to be sure that the character of The Median Sib remained the same. After just a few weeks, I’m already up to several hundred dollars a month for this month, and I hope to increase that each month in the future. My traffic has more than doubled, too. I’m hoping to incrase it even further in the coming months.
Making money by blogging is possible. It’s not just reserved for the big name blogs. Remember, though, that people read your blog for a reason. Over time, your writing (choice of topics, style of writing and general “mood”) creates a personality. If you suddenly change your typical posting, you will lose some of your readership. You must be diligent in maintaining your blog’s mood and character - along with your own integrity. Here are the first seven steps I took, and I believe they can work for you, too:
(1) Maintaining your integrity is important. So the first step is to write and post a “disclosure” statement on your blog. The easiest way to do this is to write the disclosure statement on a page or in a post, and then link to that page or post in your sidebar. Follow this link to get information on disclosure statements and to develop your own. It’s important for your readers to know up front what your policy is about writing for payment. Personalize your disclosure statement so that it reflects YOUR intent regarding your blog.
(2) Sign up for Google Adsense. Sign up and then read all the information carefully in order to add Adsense to your blog. Adsense revenue depends on your traffic and whether or not people click on your google ads. Play around with it until you figure out what works for you and your blog.
(3) Sign up for PayPerPost. You must submit your blog for approval and also sign up for the categories you are interested in. Be generous with your categories because you want to receive as many opportunities as possible - and since you never are required to take an opportunity, it doesn’t hurt to have many choices. So maximize your choices by signing up for lots of categories.
Once your blog is approved, you will be able to browse various “ops” (opportunities). Ops are the posts that advertisers are willing to pay you to write. This is where your integrity and your blog’s character come into play. For example, I am a fan of Dave Ramsey and don’t believe that people should use credit except to buy their homes and in unusual circumstances. So, although there are ops everyday to write about loan offers, I don’t take them. Sometimes there are ops for products that I can’t relate to - and I pass them up, too. That means that some days I don’t take a PayPerPost op - and that’s okay. The higher your google PR rank, your realrank and your Alexa ranking, the better ops you’ll get.
(4) When you write a post, be very deliberate about the title - even non-paid posts. You want to attract traffic, and vague titles defeat that purpose. A title like “A wonderful afternoon” may describe your day, but it doesn’t provide any information for search engines to pick up on. If your post is about a person, put the person’s full name in the title. “A wonderful afternoon” might become “A wonderful afternoon meeting Dolly Parton at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.” Use as many key words in the title as possible - even it makes the title extra long. You’ll get more readers that way. And more readers translate into more revenue.
(5) Be sure to use Technorati tags for each post. And if you haven’t joined Technorati, do. Again, the tags help search engines pick up on your post. On the above title, I would put “Dolly Parton, County Music Hall of Fame, Nashville, Tennessee, museums, music, country music, family trip” as my tags.
(6) Visit other blogs. Read other blogs that are interesting to you, and take the time to leave comments. You want to build your own “blogging community” in which you support the bloggers you like, and they, in turn, will support you. ALWAYS leave a link to your blog when you leave a comment. If you’ve written something on the same general topic, leave a link to that particular post. That way future readers/commenters can follow the link to your blog.
(7) Write. Write. Write. Your blog must be updated often in order for people to continue to read it. Keep a small notebook in your pocket or purse. When you’re going about your daily life and see or hear something that is interesting that you would like to write about, jot down a note to remind yourself of it later when you’re at your computer. I’ve found that a notebook is invaluable in remembering all those things you experience each day that would make a good post. Once your regular readers realize that you update more than once a day, they’ll visit your blog more often -AND you’ll gain new readers.
These steps are just the beginning of making money on your blog. Stay tuned for more updates. As I learn and earn more, you can, too.
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