For the newbies: how to start a blog that makes money

31 May, 2008

For the newbies: how to start a blog that makes money

Posted by: Zang Caesar In: Make Money Online

Do you like to write? Are you fond of putting into words everything that crosses your mind? Do you want to tell the world these stories and actually make money with your writings?

I cannot blame, nor underestimate, your disbelief the moment you read this post that by writing you can truly make bucks, as I was once like you. All I knew of a blog then is that it is where you put your entries, whether daily, weekly, and whatever suits your leisure time… and just that. But as I put it, your blog can REALLY drive you money. How?

First thing first
What is a blog? Blog is the short term for weblog, which is originally where a website puts in its important logs, just like a diary. Over time, internet users have adopted this trend, thus the bloom of the million blogs on the Internet.

How and where to make a blog
You can choose from the many blog providers online to host your blog. Blogger.com (blogspot), Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, MovableType.com, Vox.com, I.ph and Today.com are just few of the popular blog providers. Social profile networks like Friendster, Myspace, LiveJournal, Multiply and Hi5 also provide blog but personally I consider these as inferior blogs as they don’t support many features needed to have a very excellent blog.

You can avail of these sites’ free blog host provision but it has its downsides of course. Because it’s free, your blog will be a subdomain, with the extensions. For example, you decided to name your blog as iamjoe, so the URL will become www.iamjoe.blogspot.com, or -.wordpress.com, or -.typepad.com. Not that it’s bad, but I tell you, you can make more money with your own domain like www.iamjoe.com. If you don’t have anything to pay for your own domain registration, then just do with the free stuff and just buy later on when your blog has eventually earned you some money. That’s what I did; I started my money-making blog, My Consoling Asylum, in the Blogger platform and when that blog has earn me bucks and bucks I decided to buy my own domain, which is ZangCaesar.com, this very blog! So now I have two, and the more blogs you have, the more money you can make.

Making money online
Your blog can drive you bucks through advertising. That can be accomplished through various ways. You can post ads that pay you when visitors click them. These ad systems are called pay-per-click (PPC). Google Adsense is on top of this, the best PPC ad system there is in the net. I have known bloggers who earn $25 to $30 a day with Google Adsense and I envy them. You can also try other systems like Adbrite, Bidvertiser, WidgetBucks, and a lot more.

These pay-per-click system may drive you money but not much, especially if your blog is new and has few readers and less traffic. Who will click these ads if you don’t have readers? You, yourself? Well that is something you should not try as the companies that provide these systems are wiser than you think. They will know whether you just click your own ads, leading to your account termination with them.

The other avenue to make more money online is by doing paid advertisements through review posts. In this way, you will write a post that tells about an advertiser’s products or services, and the post you made for them shall contain the link they provided. This link when clicked will lead to their website, and they owe you $5 to $100 for that, it depends on the advertisers (here is an example of a paid review/post). To do this, you need to sign-up on paid-to-review sites. There are many, but I will tell you in the next posts so better watch out. It is through paid reviews that I make more money. It’s not much but receiving $100 to $200 a month from these paid reviews is something, at least for me.

When can I start making money?

make money online with clicks from your site

As soon as your sign-up for an account on sites with PPC is approved, you can start making money right away as you post their ads on your site and someone clicks them. However, with paid-to-review systems, most of them will require your blog to be at least 2-3 months old and has at least 20 posts before you will be approved. But I tell you, it is worth the wait. So while waiting, just enjoy writing. Two or three months will pass by like a fly if you just let it.

Still skeptic? Unconvinced?
If you raise a brow after reading this post and still would not want to believe that this can actually happen, you can see read this previous post of mine and watch the video, the video that drove me and some Filipino bloggers (such as JoanJoyce and Itot) into making a blog and earn money from it.

If you have questions and are curious and interested about starting a blog, you can always contact me for help or leave a comment or two. I’d be so happy to extend help.