How to Make Money Blogging

If you are thinking of starting a blog, or want to make money blogging, then this comprehensive blogging guide will highlight what you need to increase web traffic and make money.

Whether you own a small business and want to make money selling goods, or whether your want to make money from advertising or affiliate links, the process is the same.

Blogging isn’t rocket science, but it does require some initial organization before it is effective as a money making enterprise.

Understand the “make money blogging” equation

There are two parts to making money from a blog:

1. Traffic
2. Conversion rate

Traffic refers to the number of visitors arriving at your blog.

“Conversions” are any actions those visitors take that meet your predefined business objectives. An objective is usually related to making money, or something that ultimately leads to revenue – like clicking on an ad, affiliate link, signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, etc.

The “conversation rate” refers to what percent of blog visitors convert.

You can assign an average dollar value to any conversion on your blog. In other words, some conversions might be worth 20c, while others might be worth $25. Let’s call this average conversion value M for monetization.

The make money blogging equation looks like this:

Money = Traffic x Conversion rate x M

Simple, huh? To make money, all you need to do is find a way to drive traffic and convert it! If you can do that you will make money blogging.

Check out this quick and free content revenue calculator that you can use as a guideline for what blog content should earn.

Personal attributes of successful bloggers

The make money blogging equation shows the scientific side of blogging for income. But in order to succeed as a blogger you need some very human qualities.

To make money blogging requires the following three things:

1. Knowledge
2. Passion
3. Persistence

Everything else can be bought, outsourced or learned. You don’t need any technical knowledge of PHP, HTML, CSS because platforms like WordPress make it easy to get blogging in no time at all.

Knowledge: Blog about something you know a lot about, or are interested in learning

Passion: The more passionate you are about something, the easier it is to keep going – especially at the start when there isn’t much money coming in

Persistence: Blogging is a medium term investment in time and effort. It won’t pay off overnight. That’s why you need to be passionate about the subject.

Tips & resources to help you make money blogging

If you’re still confident that you have what it takes to make money blogging then here is a list of blogging tips, tutorials, guides and resources that show you everything you need to know about blogging and making money online.

Blog writing

Arguably the most important factor in the success of any blog, is how interesting, relevant, useful, conversation-worthy, astounding, funny or insightful the blog content is.

Think about information you share with colleagues, friends and family. What is it about that content that made you pass it along? If you can endow your blog content with the same “magic ingredient” that causes people to sit up and take notice, then you are more than half way to success.

Here is my list of the most important attributes of blog content:

• Relevant to your audience
• Interesting & engaging
• Written in a simple and easy-to-understand way
• Presented clearly
• Logical structure and flow
• Unique and original

Read the following blogging articles for more information on how to create great blogging content:

• How to create award winning blog content from a small business ‘Top mover’
• Three laws of blogging that get traffic and maximize ROI
• Anatomy of a blog post: How to get more traffic and social engagement from your content
• The magic ingredient: What to change about your blog and social in order to succeed

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to a set of tools, techniques and technologies designed to help content rank better in Google search (and other search engines). Recently Google has been cracking down on people using spammy SEO techniques, so you need to be careful about how to apply SEO.

Here are the best SEO resources to help you get the right balance and utilize SEO most effectively for your blog:

• What is SEO? Here’s the ultimate small business SEO guide
• Five top SEO tips for small business bloggers
• Small business SEO tutorial: How to attract higher quality Google traffic
• “Google insights for Search” as the best free SEO tool for small business SEO
• Local SEO guide: How to refine local search terms to master Google search

Analytics

Part of building blog traffic going forward relies on understanding what traffic is doing now. In order to be able to understand who is visiting your blog, and what they are doing, you’ll need a decent analytics program, like Google Analytics.

Here are some of the best articles covering analytics for bloggers:

• Five ways to make more money using analytics
• How to double your search traffic using SEO, Webmaster tools and Google analytics
• Five awesome tips to extract valuable SEO secrets from Google analytics data
• SEO Blogging tips: How to use Google analytics search data to inspire new content

Marketing

Blog marketing comes in many flavors, but one of the most important aspects to marketing a blog is social media marketing. It is crucial that you get people talking about your content. The more people share and discuss your content, the more other people will join in the debate and create “buzz“.

Implementing a great Internet and social marketing strategy will help decrease the amount of time it takes to get your blog to the point where it is self-sustaining. But be warned, 2012 is a year of great change, and you need to be aware of what is happening in the search and marketing industries as a whole.

Here are the best Internet and social marketing articles and resources for bloggers:

• Small business SEO & Internet marketing strategy guide, 2012
• How Google Product Search will affect small business SEO SEM strategies and how to cope
• 5 best Internet marketing services for small business, 2012
• The top five tips that teach you how to rock social media
• How best to target new social, marketing, business or blogging connections

Selling advertising & affiliate links

Online advertising is one of the best ways to make money from high quality blog content. There are many ad networks, affiliate networks, ad platforms, and so on, and it can be a bit bewildering to find the right one for your content.

My advice is to start off with the easiest advertising option – Google Adsense provides targeted ads with minimal fuss.

When you are ready to get more adventurous and explore new ways to make money blogging, check out the following resources:

• PeerFly: affiliate marketing network
• Clicksor: contextual online advertising software and network
• DoubleClick for Publishers: advanced ad management software by Google
• LinkShare: large affiliate network

Now it’s your turn to have a say. Have you been blogging with little to no success, but improved after reading this article? Are there tips and techniques you use to drive traffic and convert it into moola that you’d like to add to this article? Share your thoughts and opinions in the comments below or join the discussion on Twitter and LinkedIn.