Making Money Blogging the Right Way

There are many get get rich quick schemes on the web. However, the only ones getting rich seems to be those selling those schemes.

There are proven ways to make money on the web but they are generally not quick and take blood, sweat and perhaps tears. However, in the end they pay off very well.

Blogging vs. a Static Site

There is dispute raging in the internet marketing world whether it is better to use a blog to make money or build a static site.

A static site has advantages in that, if it attracts a following, they tend to be more serious than casual blog vistors. It is easier to establish a fixed site as an authority site than a blog.

A blog has advantages in that it allows the owner to really get to know his/her customer base. There are also special SEO (search engine optimization) advantages to blogging.

In my opinion, both can work if the right approach is taken.

How to Make Money Blogging

The basic plan for making money blogging is to use Ken Evoy of SiteSell's CTPM concept.

C - content
T - traffic
P - presell
M - Monetize

In a very concise nutshell this means that content is king on the web and if you provide it you will get traffic and find people that will respond very positively to it. You need to pick a topic that attracts a following but is not overloaded with competition. Once you have found this topic, you need to use SEO techniques to get traffic. The next step is preselling which means overdelivering valuable content and information to your customer base BEFORE attempting to sell anything to them. If you have provided value to them and they trust you, they will accept your suggestions for purchase. The final step is to monetize in any number of ways including AdSense, affiliate marketing, direct selling of goods, or selling of services etc.

SEO software

The first thing that you need to do is pick a niche. By using niche picking software, you can find a topic that is profitable and does not have too much competition. If this is a topic that you are passionate about, such as fly fishing, computer gaming of a particular game, all the better. For blogging in particular, since you are going to be engaging in many discussions about your chosen topic, it pays to really be knowledgeable and excited about it.

Next you have to find the right keywords to base topics about so that they attract traffic. Keyword SEO software is important for this.

Links to your site may be more important for traffic than keywords. Links can be generated by submitting articles to article sites, getting listed in directories, submitting videos to video sites and by commenting on blogs or forums related to your topic. There are many tools that help in this process

Using social bookmarking at sites such as Digg and StumbleUpon can be a powerful stimulus for links to your site.

SEO Blogging Software

There are 2 problems that all bloggers face. The main problem that they face is the need to produce quality content on a consistent basis. Creating fresh and interesting content is a challenge. Bloggers also need links to rate in the search engines.

Blogs have a special tool for generating links called trackbacks. If you comment on another blog, you send them a pingback and they can approve a link to your site called a trackback.

There are programs that search blogs for articles related to keywords that you provide. They then allow you to easily integrate these articles into your blog and they also set up trackbacks for you so that if the blog that you referred to accepts your trackback you will get a link back to your site. There are videos online that describe their operation in detail.