How to Make Money Blogging by Davor Loncaric - HTML preview

Newbie's Guide To Blogging For Profit

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Newbies Guide To Blogging For Profit

What is blogging, and how can it be your ticket to financial freedom?

Blogging is method for writers, artists, individuals, ANYONE really, to broadcast their

thoughts and opinions for the whole world to read. Blogging allows you the opportunity to

potentially get hundreds of thousands of people to read your stuff without having to be a

celebrity or a published author.

Some bloggers have emerged from the depths of obscurity, starting out as nobodies. Now

they're famous! (Perez Hilton is one example.) There are also many blogs that have become

authorities in their niche, overtaking even media giants.

TMZ.com and DailyKos.com are two more examples. These types of websites garner visitors

in the millions each and every month.

So it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to learn that blogging is also a highly effective way

to make money online.

Countless bloggers all over the world silently rake in hundreds, thousands, even tens of

thousands of dollars per month! The best part is that it's not particularly hard!

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Dedicating an hour or two per day to working on your blogs and publishing new content

should be more than enough to get your blogging income off the ground.

Curious to learn how to do it?

Then come along for the ride...

Choosing A Niche

Niche blogging means blogging with the intention of marketing to a particular niche. A niche

is a subset of a market. Think of it this way:

Sports >> Fishing >> Fly Fishing (niche)

Cars >> Sports Cars >> Ferrarris (niche)

Why not just create a blog about sports or a blog about cars? Well, we could. But the reason

why we want to narrow it down is because we want focused content. We want our visitors to

be looking for something in particular-- and we want them to find it on our website.

A person stumbling on to a sports website could be looking for anything. Football scores, golf

tips, etc. It that case it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to cater to everyone.

But if you have someone curious about the best fly fishing rods and he happens to come

across your blog aptly titled, "Fly Fishing Rods", then you have satisfied his need.

He has stumbled across a website that offers exactly the content he's looking for, and

potentially the products that he wants too.

In this way, we don't need to drive TONS of traffic to our blog just to generate a few bucks -

because we can make just as much, if not more, from a small amount of visitors because this

traffic is highly targeted.

To break it down further, we'll be headed into mico-niche territory. An example of this would

be "bamboo fly fishing rods". This is even more targeted than "fly fishing rods".However, the key here is knowing whether or not this micro-niche is popular enough to warrant making a

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blog about it. It doesn't matter how targeted your blog is: if no one cares about this topic and

no one is searching for it, then you won't make any money.

A good way to tell if your micro-niche is popular enough is by browsing Amazon.

By doing a simple search for "bamboo fly fishing rod" on Amazon, we can see that there are

several popular books on the topic.

Casting a Spell: The Bamboo Fly Rod and the American Pursuit of Perfection

A Bamboo Artisan Fly Fishing on the Ruby River

Bamboo Fly Rod Suite: Reflections on Fishing And the Geography of Grace

Fishing Bamboo: An Angler's Passion for the Traditional Fly Rod

Fundamentals of Building a Bamboo Fly-Rod

Handcrafting Bamboo Fly Rods

How can you tell if a book is popular on Amazon? Overall, there are no hard and fast rules.

Just browse through the selection and it shouldn't be hard to determine whether or not people

are interested in the topic.

Just the fact that there are books written about the subject should tell you something.

Check to see how many reviews the book has-- the more the better (obviously). Also take a

look at the book's rank.

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The book above is ranked #38,713 in the Kindle Store, and #21 in the Fishing category. The

Kindle Store has over 390,000 books, so its rank is actually pretty good.

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This book is rated #87,661 in books, which is pretty good for Amazon. Generally, anything

under 100,000 is considered decent. It is also ranking pretty well in several categories.

To sum it up, just browse Amazon for a while to get a general idea of the popularity of a

niche. But don't be too analytical-- it's easy to get bogged down in the analyzing/research

stage, and once that happens, you start to hesitate and second-guess yourself.

What if this niche isn't a money-maker? Well, you won't really know until you try. So try!

Even if you fail, at least it will be a good learning experience, so you will be better equipped

for your next blog.

Another step you take to tell if a niche is profitable or not is to do a simple search on Google.

In our case we're searching for "bamboo fly fishing rods":

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To the right of the search results, you'll notice a bunch of Google Adwords advertisements.

This is a very good sign, because it means that companies are advertising for this keyword,

which in turn means that people are SPENDING MONEY in this niche.

If you don't see any sponsored links when you search for your niche, there's a good chance

that there's simply no money in it.

Choosing Good Keywords

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Okay, so now that you've chosen your niche, it's time to do some good 'ole keyword research

and accompanying competition analysis!

Gasp! What do these crazy terms mean, you ask?

Well, it's really quite simple. Keyword analysis means taking a look at the actual keywords

and keyword phrases related to your niche that people are typing into Google on a regular

basis.

Your goal will be to pick one good keyword phrase, as well as several secondary keyword

phrases (the more the better). Our intent here is to rank high in Google for these keyword

phrases, and that will be the primary means of driving traffic to our blog.

Competition analysis means checking to see how many websites are going to be in direct

competition with your blog as you try to rank for those keyword phrases.

We'll start with keyword analysis. There are many ways you can do this. You can buy

programs that will perform keyword research for you, but we won't bother with that here. For

now we're going to concentrate on one tool, the Google Adwords Keyword Tool:

By imputting our keywords into this tool, we can see on average how many searches they get

per month. Scroll down a little further, and you can find related keywords-- "Additional

Keywords to Consider".

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As you can see, "bamboo fly fishing rods" gets about 2400 searches per month. That's not

bad. Generally, for your main keyword phrase, you'd like to have atleast one or two thousand

searches per month. If you can get more than that, it's even better.

Now let's go to Google and conduct some competition analysis for this keyword. Type your

keyword phrase in quotes like this: "bamboo fly fishing rods".

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Notice how many search results pop up. Generally, anything under 30,000 is pretty good, and

anything under 10,000 is great! So this keyword "bamboo fly fishing rods" has potential.

Now I like to conduct a couple more searches for good measure. Search for allintitle:

"bamboo fly fishing rods" . This gives you every website that has its title optimized for

"bamboo fly fishing rods". There are 4,040 results.

Next, input inanchor:"bamboo fly fishing rods" and you'll see how many websites have

"bamboo fly fishing rods" in its anchor text (link text). There are 6,010 results.

These results make up your REAL competition: the people who are actively trying to rank for

this keyword by using on-page SEO and using the keyword in the title and in anchor text.

Now, to dig up a little bit more information on these sites, I like to use an add-on for Firefox

called "SEO For Firefox". Once installed, a little icon appears in the extreme lower right

corner of your browser. Click on it and you'll be able to see more data about the websites you

go to.

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Below the site description, highlighted in blue, you can see tons of information about the site.

These are all factors that come into play when determining the site's rank. This site ranks #1

for the keyword "bamboo fly fishing rods".

What you will want to do is try to determine WHY it ranks #1, and what you would have to

do with your blog to try to compete with this site, as well as with all the other websites on

page 1 of the Google search results.

I'm not going to go too in depth with competition analysis, because it's a wide topic that could

comprise several ebooks on its own. If you need more info, do a quick Google search. There's

tons of information that can be found all over the internet for free.

Once you've picked your main keyword phrase, go back to the Google Keyword Tool and

select a whole bunch of secondary keyword phrases-- anywhere from 5 to 20. These don't

have to have thousands of searches per month.

These secondary keyword phrases are meant to be the "low hanging fruit"-- they don't get

tons of searches, but they also have very little competition, so they should be easy to rank for.

Get a Domain & Hosting

Okay, so you've chosen a niche and picked out some keywords. Now it's time to get your blog

started, which generally means buying a domain name & hosting. A domain name costs

around $10 (for a .com) and about $4 to $8 per month for hosting.

"But, but, but... I don't have any money!"

Well, all right. You don't necessarily HAVE to buy your own domain name. You can use a

free blogging platform like Blogger (don't use Wordpress.com, as they don't like

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advertising/marketing). There are many popular, high-ranking, money-making Blogger blogs.

However, keep in mind that using a free blog platform and having your own domain is like

the difference between renting a place and owning your own home. When you rent, your

place isn't really yours. You're just staying there.

You can't tear down a wall or remodel your kitchen or even paint your walls a different color

without permission. All of your rent money goes into someone else's hands. And you can get

kicked out for breaking the rules or breaching contract.

But when you own your own home, you can do whatever you want with it. It's all yours. You

make your own rules. And eventually, your home becomes an asset.

When you use Blogger, you're pretty much handing over all control of your blog to them.

They can delete it if they don't like it, and then all of your hard work will be thrown out the

window.

Okay, my lecture is over. Do whatever feels most comfortable to you.

For registering a domain name, two of the most popular companies seem to be GoDaddy and

NameCheap.

For SEO purposes, I'd recommend you buy a .com. Google seems to like .com's, and they

sound the most professional. (although they are more expensive than other TLDs, .info's are

usually cheaper than a dollar, but they also don't seem to rank well at all).

It's also important to choose a domain name that has your main keyword phrase in the URL.

For instance, www.bambooflyfishingrods.com. If that domain name is taken (it is), I like to put a word at the end of it, like bambooflyfishingrodsonline.com.

Or you could use dashes between two or more of the words. However there seems to be some

debate over whether or not that is a smart idea. A domain name like bamboo-fly-fishing-rods-

today.com sounds spammy, and apparently Google doesn't like that sort of thing. Just use your own discretion.

Next you'll have to buy hosting. Godaddy and Namecheap also offer hosting. Some other

popular web hosting companies are BlueHost, Hostgator, DreamHost, Media Temple, and

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Just Host.

Follow the directions given to you by your domain name provider and hosting company and

you should be up and running in no time.

Setting Up Wordpress & Optimizing Your Blog

Now that you've purchased a domain name and hosting, it's time to set up Wordpress and get

the ball rolling!

What is Wordpress, and why should you use it?

Wordpress is a CMS (Content Management System) and blogging platform that is extremely

flexible and easy to use. Total newbies can learn how to use it without any problem and more

experienced web programmers will delight in its flexibility. It is extremely customizable.

It also has a "ping" feature and lots of cool plugins that make it easy to rank in the search

engines. Simply put, Google loves Wordpress blogs, and most bloggers love Wordpress too.

So how do you set it up? By far, the easiest method is by accessing your Cpanel given to you

by your hosting company. Most Cpanel interfaces have a feature called "Fantastico".

Using Fantastico, you can install Wordpress in only a couple minutes with a few clicks of the

mouse.

Another method is to install Wordpress manually, which you'll have to do if you don't have

access to Fantastico (or if you don't want to use it).

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We won't go into manual Wordpress installation here, but it's not really hard either. It just

takes a bit more time and might be a little intimating to "technophobes". Do a Google search

and you'll find plenty of tutorials.

So, now that you have Wordpress installed, there are a few things we can do to optimize our

blog. First of all, get rid of that boring Kubrick default theme. It's ugly and plain, and we

want our blog to look nice. There are thousands of free Wordpress themes available.

Take the time to browse and choose one that really stands out and suits our blog's niche. You

can even invest in a fancy premium Wordpress theme if you want, but it's definitely not

necessary.

Next, go to the "Settings" tab. Under "General", make sure that your blog title contains the keyword phrase.

Next do a Google search for "Wordpress ping list". Copy and paste this list into the "Update

Services" text box located on the "Writing" page.

This will "ping" a wide variety of services every time you publish a post, thereby increasing

your exposure on the web. It will also lessen the time it takes Google to index your site and

your individual blog posts.

Finally, go to the "Permalinks" page and choose something other than the Default link

structure. I prefer to select "Custom Structure" and put %postname% in the box. This makes

it so your links look like this: