There are many ways to blog and make money from your blogs. You can join article publishing sites, create your own blog on free blogging platforms, or launch a self-hosted blog.
Getting Started With Article Publishing Sites
One of the easiest ways to make money from writing is by publishing on niche content sites or article sites. You don’t have to spend a dime, yet you can make a good residual income by publishing on article publishing sites.
Rational Mind is an article publishing site. You can earn from the traffic on your articles. Rational Mind is just one example. A simple Google search will give you a list of sites where you can publish articles and make money from your articles.
Getting Started With a Self-hosted Blog
A serious blogger will always choose to blog with a self-hosted blog. Creating a self hosted blog requires some knowledge on Content Management System and programming.
You also need a domain and hosting for your blog. You can get a domain from a Domain Registrants and hosting from web hosting companies. Some of the popular domain registrants and web hosting companies are Namecheap, Go Daddy, HostGator, iPage etc.
When registering a domain name, you have an option to use different kinds of extension. Some of the popular Top Level Domain extensions are dot com, dot net, dot org, dot edu etc. Some lesser known extensions are dot xyz, dot website, dot site, dot space. You can even find domain extensions like dot pizza, dot accountant, dot engineer etc.
Selection of web hosting company should be based on pricing, package deal, reputation of the company and customer support.
To create a self hosted website, you need to buy a domain and the hosting plan. You can also use free hosting services. There are companies that offer you free hosting. A simple Google search will provide a list of free hosting companies. 000webhost is one of the popular free hosting companies.
The drawbacks of free hosting are uptime reliability, diskspace, bandwith etc. Some ad networks will not approve websites running on a free hosting.
Getting Started With Free Blogging Platforms
In order to create a self-hosted blogs, you must know about CSS, HTML and other coding related to website building, or hire someone to build a website for you. If that is not possible, you can try free blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, Weebly, Wix etc.
WordPress was primarily launched as a free blogging platform which is now available as a powerful Content Management System. On WordPress.com you can get a free blog. WordPress offers you prebuilt templates and plugins; with a basic knowledge, you can build a good website from scratch, or upgrade your free hosted wordpress website to paid wordpress website. For as little $13 a year, you can have a premium wordpress website.
If you want a self hosted wordpress site but do not want a premium version from wordpress.com or do not want to bother with the technical aspect of hosting, you can get a managed wordpress hosting. When you have managed wordpress hosting, you can forget about technical aspect of hosting and website development and focus yourself on content development. There are a lot of web hosting companies that offer managed wordpress hosting. Namecheap offers managed wordpress hosting for as little as $3 per month.
Weebly can be another option. You can get a free weebly blog or premium weebly blog. For $4 a month, you can have your own blog. The first time registration also include domain fee. Weebly has a good interface and is very simple to use. Weebly is ideal for the beginners.
There are numerous free blogging platforms and most of these also offer premium version. The best thing about using the premium versions of free blogs is you can have a great looking blog without any technical knowledge.
You might ask, which one is good a free blog or premium blog. Your free hosted blog will look like yourwebsite.wordpress.com or yourwebsite.blogspot.com. The subdomain can be a big turn off for visitors. The premium version will get you a blog with a custom domain. If your blog is on a subdomain, you may not be able to use network ads.
Blogging For Money: How To Monetize Your Blog and Generate Traffic and Revenue
Now, you have a blog, what next? That’s right! Now you should be thinking about making money from your blog. Many people start blogging for fun or money, however, soon they abandon blogging because their passion runs dry or are not make any money.
Monetizing Your Blog and Making Money From Your Blog
Whether you have a blog on a free blogging platform or a self hosted blog, you cannot make money unless it is monetized. You can use various ad networks to monetize your blog. Remember, there is limitation on monetizing the free blog. You may not be able to use network ads on most of the free blogs.
Monetizing With Ad Networks: Ad Networks For Your Blog
Adsense is an advertising program from Google available for small, medium as well big publishers. Adsense is a pay per click program, which means in order to earn from Adsense ads, the ads on your blogs must get clicks. Remember, the clicks must be genuine, you will be banned if you click your own ads or ask someone to click your ads. In order to earn from adsense, you must receive volume traffic on your blog and your click through rate must be really high.
Adsense is not the only ad network that you can use on your blog. Media.Net is another popular choice. Media.net is powered by Yahoo Bing. You can use Media.Net ads alongside Adsense. If you cannot use Adsense for some reason, Media.net is the best Adsense alternative. In order to earn from Media.Net the ads displayed on your site needs double click. The fist click will show the keyword blocks, and when the visitor clicks any link on sponsored link page, you will earn.
There are many ad networks that you can use on your blog. Some of the popular ad networks are: Infolinks, Propeller Ads, Adhitz etc.
Monetizing With Affiliate Ads: Affiliate Ad Networks For Your Blog
Along with ad networks like Adsense and Media.Net, you can also use affiliate ads on your blog. In order to make money from affiliate ads, your visitors have to buy the products you are promoting. Some popular affiliate ad networks are: Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, LinkShare etc.
Whether you want to use Network Ads like Adsense or Affiliate Ads like Amazon, or both, the basic requirements to join these programs is to have a blog with a lot of contents. Once you have enough high quality, well written unique contents, apply for these advertising programs.
How do Make Money From Your Blog
You are running network ads or affiliate ads on your blog do not mean you are already earning money. If you want to make money, you need volume traffic that interacts with your ads either by clicking ads or buying the affiliate products. So, how do you get traffic on your blogs?
You will get traffic on your blogs by optimizing your blog and articles for search engines and promoting on social media. In order to get trust from search engines, your contents must be properly titled, there should be proper use of keywords and the article should be longer.
Here are some of the ways to get traffic from search engines.
Tags: Use tags that describe your content properly. Your tags must contain search terms, keywords and keyphrase. Always use at least 6 quality tags.
Title: Use a good title. Never use misleading title. Your title must contain keywords, keyphrase or a long tail search term. Title of your content must always include something that people type on search engines.
Description (Meta description): Always write a short teaser or description. Search engines catch the title and the description of your content. If your description is good, it is likely that your content will be clicked when it appears on search engines.
Category: Category is also important. Use category that best describes your content.
Social Media Sharing: Apart from search engines, social media are also a good source of traffic. Share your article on facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin etc. When you are sharing, always write a short teaser.
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