Can You Really make Money From Blogging?

Can YOU Really Make Money From BloggingCopyright 2005 by Willie Crawford

One of the questions I see frequently asked on online discussion forums is, "Can You Really Make MoneyFrom Blogging?" People want to know if there's someway to profit from the time they spend maintainingtheir weblogs or personal online journals.

My answer is an emphatic "YES," because I do it...everyday!

Today I'll share with you how I do it.

Let me begin by saying that I don't make thousands permonth from MOST of my blogs. However, I do have manymaking hundreds. Since I don't put in a lot of timemaintaining them, and I enjoy blogging, I consider the money a bonus. I blog while sitting in my yard with mylaptop (on a wireless connection)... watching the cloudsroll by.

Another bonus I get from blogging is that it helpsmy regular websites that are set up as my "money machines."

The search engines visit my blogs more often than theyvisit my regular sites, and they follow the links from my blogs pointing to other sites. Some of these linkspoint to my sites, and some point to sites of partners.This does help the search engine rankings of these sitesMASSIVELY.

How Do I Monetize My Blogs?

I monetize my blogs by creating blogs on topics people are searching for... and that they are spending money on. I know which niches are hot to an extent based upon what my research proves pay-per-click advertisers are willing to spend their advertising dollars on.

I run Google AdSense ads on my blogs. I simply insert these ads in my menu bar and other strategic places onthe webpage. I also experiment with other paid advertising on my blogs.

I sell affiliate products from my blogs. I simply findaffiliate products at places like PayDotCom.com and Commission Junction. I incorporate these into my blogs. I do things like product reviews, how-to articles, etc. You can also locate suitable affiliate products by typing your target keywords + "affiliate program" at any major search engine. This should point out numerous websiteswith suitable affiliate programs to you.

How Do I Setup/Host My Blogs?

I have blog hosted on some of my own domains using MoveableType. This is just one of many great pieces of bloggingsoftware. You have other choices... my programmer recommended this one to me.

I also have blogs hosted for free on Blogger.com. I have them on Blogger.com because they are incredibly easy toset up and maintain. A secondary reason I have them onBlogger.com is that Google OWNS Blogger.com and theyindex webpages hosted on their servers OFTEN and FAST!

The secret to getting Google and Yahoo! to visit yourblogs often is a technique called "blogging and pinging."It's a method of notifying all of the major search engines,and blog directories, each time that you update your blog.The search engines come to take a look and they follow links from your blog to spider other blogs/sites. It's very powerful.

I won't go into too much details on blogging and pinging here. If you want more information on that topic I inviteyou to drop by my free, Internet marketing discussionboard and ask any and all questions! It's at:http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

Examples Of Profitable Blogs?

I know, you want to see examples of profitable blogs :-)

To show you how simple it can be I'll show you just ONE.It’s less than 2 months old :-)

The problem is that as soon as I show a site to anyone asan example, it's instantly ripped off. So, I'm going to"sacrifice" one making me about $60 per day from affiliate product sales and about $20 per day in AdSenserevenue. That site is at: http://cure-nail-fungus.blogspot.com

The above site currently ranks Number 6 on Yahoo for theterm "cure nail fungus." It's a small niche but onethat makes me $2400 per month... just from that one blog.

If you searched on the same term at Google, this site is not very highly ranked. However, THIS page is Num ber4:http://www.chitterlings.com/no-more-nail-fungus.html

That happens to be one of my pages too :-) I won't tell you what ALL I'm up to on that page... that's another article. The technique involves using your own domains to promote affiliate products rather than advertising someone else's domain... so it improves your link popularity.

I'm not going to show more of my blogs because that just invites competition. Instead, I'm going to answer another question you have to be wondering...

"How do I find time to maintain all of these blogs, even if they are profitable?"

Well, first of all, I don't really need a lot like the "sacrificial lamb" that I showed you above to keep me satisfied.

I do have a number of secret weapons though. One is calledAutoBlogger. You can check it out at:http://WillieCrawford.com/auto-blogger.html

What AutoBlogger does is allow me to queue up a number of posts for my various blogs in advance. It lets you queueup "articles" which can really be anything you want. Thenyou tell the software at what frequency to make a post.

My AutoBlogger account allows me to automatically post toan UNLIMITED number of blogs.

WARNING: A program like AutoBlogger can get you introuble if you misuse it! If you use it to spam or abusethe search engines, it's just going to get you banned.If you use it to abuse the blog hosts, they're just goingto delete your blogs.

Here's how I use AutoBlogger:

I have sites where I discuss Internet marketing... as justone example. On these sites I share many of my articles and tidbits. I simply queue up these articles/tidbits to postat a given frequency. This frequency can be a set number ofhours, days, weeks, or months. So theoretically, I canset up a blog, pre-schedule 50 posts, and not touch it inmonths, while it is automatically posted to for the next 50 intervals.

AutoBlogger even lets you set it to start rotatingthrough the posts again when they run out, if you wantto. I personally wouldn't do this since you'd just beposting duplicate content.

AutoBlogger allows you to insert RSS feeds right intoyour blog posts. So in addition to posting articlesyou can also auto-update by adding new RSS feeds ata set interval. Since I HATE sending my traffic to other sites (without reciprocation), these RSS feeds generallypull from MY sites. That way, my traffic is only sentto my other sites.

If you don't even feel like queuing up a lot of posts,you can go to a site like Elance.com and hire someone elseto do it for you... or just hired your kids to do it for you. It can be as easy as you want to make it.

OK, I've just proven to you that you can make moneyoff of blogs. In-fact, you can make more money thanmany people make off of their REGULAR websites. Itjust takes a little thinking outside the box!

It also takes not being too greedy. What I just showedyou works for me because I'm not doing anything that'slikely to get me banned from the search engines,Google AdSense, Blogger.com, or any affiliate program.It's only when you get carried away, and do things thatharm the search engines that you "shoot yourself inthe foot."

Set up blogs providing useful content. Make regular posts to these blogs but not in a manner that seemsunnatural. By that, I mean don't auto-post twentytimes in an hour, or post every hour for a month! Nohuman can possible post to a blog at these rates forlong, so the search engines detect something is "wrong."They don't generally prohibit you from using tools tomake your job easier... just don't get carried away!

There are actually, thousands of people earning aliving doing things similar to what I just shared... butwith little twists. I'm meeting up with many of themin New Orleans in September. You're invited to joinus. We'll basically be sharing how we make a fortuneoff of niche websites and programs such as GoogleAdSense. You can register today at:http://WillieCrawford.com/meet-in-new-orleans.html


Willie Crawford has taught PROVEN Internet marketing techniques to thousands of successful Internet entrepreneurs since late-1996. Grab a free copy of his comprehensive, 20-Lesson Internet Marketing Success Course now at:http://WillieCrawford.com

Discover The Internet Marketing "Inner Circle!"It's at: http://TheRealSecrets.comSeminars? http://InternetMarketingSeminarSchedule.com