What’s the truth about making money online?

You have probably seen the ads on websites and in newspapers and magazines. The ad shows fancy cars and big homes, promising that “this guy” or “that girl” made thousands of dollars posting links or working from home for Google. You know, there are copies of those “big” paychecks from Google that show thousands of dollars of income for a month. They talk about how easy it was and they will let you in on their secret for an introductory offer of just a few dollars.

Well, you need to read the fine print and save your money. Don’t sign up for the “Get paid by Google” or “Make Money Selling Links on Google” programs.

Why? I’m not calling them scams, at least not outright as they do have some information, but they promise that you can make thousands in a month almost immediately. Nothing is cheap and easy, especially when it comes to making income with online businesses.

If anyone, or any program promises or tells you that you can make thousands with a little effort, something smells funny. These programs reek like a garbage dump on a hot and humid day.

How can you make money online with Google?

Before you spend your money for empty promises or monthly fees, you need to know this.

You can make money online with Google. However, you can do it for free. It’s not quick and it does take work. You get out of it what you put into it. I wrote previously in an article about the 3 steps to make money online with Google and also do you need to spend money to make money online where I detail more information about how to legitimately make money online.

The truth about posting links on Google to make money

What the whole make money posting links on Google system is promoting, besides taking your money telling you things you can find online for free, is that in order to make money with Google you have to pay to promote links. What this is talking about is using Google Adwords for you to buy links promoting websites, affiliate programs and other products. Here’s how it works.

You open an Adwords account, set up your keywords and ads and pay for everytime that someone clicks on your link. This can get expensive. I dabbled in the Adwords market a little bit and I can tell you that it cost me plenty. The hope of the system is that when someone clicks on your ad and goes to the site/service/program that you are promoting, they will buy something and you make a commission on it.

You can make money doing this, however, big warning here, you need a big wallet to get started and you must really understand keywords, human behavior, online buying trends and lots of other metrics.

My suggestion and advice, unless you really know what you are doing, stay away from Google Adwords. It will cost you more than what you can make. It is a tough market to enter because you are bidding on keywords and phrases that people search for. You are bidding against other experienced advertisers, such as Amazon and eBay, just to name a few. Big pockets with lots of money to spend on advertising.

As an individual, if you are wanting to learn how to make money online by posting links, then you might want to forget about it. However, you can make a nice income with Google Adsense. Adsense is the Google program that shows the ads that are set up in Adwords.

By writing good keyword focused articles, building backlinks to your pages and sites and increasing your traffic, you can make money when people click on your links that you show on your site. You don’t need to spend any money to learn this. Trust me.

Read my previous articles about how to create sites that are keyword focused. You don’t have to buy a website or register a domain. One of the biggest things you need to do is pick good keywords that pay well, write quality content providing information about topics/services/products, drive traffic to those sites and monetize them with Google Adsense or other affiliate programs.

My best advice is NEVER spend any money to learn how to make money online. There are some good programs out there that will help you and offer support to do this, such as The Keyword Academy, but for the most part you can find information online for free. You just need to watch out for some bloggers that promote for you to sell other people stuff to make money online.

Here are some more resources about the “Make Money With Google” scams that are going around online and in print.

• Make money posting links on google is a scam
• Make money with Google scam resources and site examples
• Official Google Blog warning about online scams
• WCPO and John Matarese reporting about this type of scam

While different methods do work differently for some people, it will all take some time and effort on your part to make it successful. There are many different ways to go about making money online. None of which are instant or quick. Yep, I said it and it is the truth. Just like with any business, you will reap what you sow. You get out of it what you put into it.

The big difference is that you can gain an advantage on the other “bloggers” that are having problems making it work because they don’t know how it really works, or they attempt to copy the so called “know it alls” and “experts” when it comes to making money online. Sure, if you are a big “A list blogger” out there with hundreds of thousands of RSS feed readers, you can make money pitching the latest and greatest products and ebooks that come along. Yep, that’s how they make their money online.

But who are the real experts that will guide you and lead you to making money online with your blog? Is John Chow a good example? Nope because he has to pay for his traffic to his sites and he blogs about what he eats and pawns crappy products and ebooks on his readers. That’s how he makes his money. What about Darren Rouse of Problogger? He’s a good guy, honestly he is and I respect him for what he has done with his site. He does have some good info, but, he makes most of his money with other sites than Problogger and his book.

So if you are tired of struggling to make it online, or want to learn more about search engine optimization techniques that will help increase your income, keep reading. If you want to learn how to dupe other unsuspecting “newbs” into buying your promised product that will make them rich in one month with one blog, you need to click out and go elsewhere.

Here is a list of the 3 biggest ways to having a success site that will earn you income.

Keyword Research

The first step is to find keywords that are high paying with Adsense, have enough search engine traffic that is searching for them, little competition in the search engine results and you can get a domain name with the keyword in the URL.

Sounds tough? Not really. You just need to find a niche, or keyword, that is searched often enough to make your efforts worth the time of creating a site that provides quality information about the product or service. This niche needs to have Adsense or other monetization methods that will give your search engine visitors a way to solve their issue by clicking the ad. They get the solution they need and you get paid.

Create Quality Content

Yeah, people say that you have to have quality content in order for people to read it. This is true. Plus if you use Adsense, you want to make sure that your site will pass a visual inspection without being flagged as a spam site. Quality content, when written appropriately, will use the keywords that you are targeting along with related keywords that will increase your search engine rankings automatically.

People that will find your site from the search engines are looking for solutions to questions that they have. When they come to your site and read your article, they will find great information about the topic they are searching for, and guess what. They will also find some ads on your site from companies or other places that will provide a tangible solution to their problems.

Get links

It used to be that in order to have a popular site you could bookmark they hell out of your posts and sites with places like StumbleUpon, Digg, MySpace and countless other social bookmarking sites. Yes, that would make your site popular for about a day or two, drive tons of traffic to your site and it might even generate a click or two on your ad. But your ad is showing so much that your CTR (click through rate) on your ads will kill your income in the long run. Plus it isn’t targeted traffic of people that are searching for your keywords or interested in reading your article.

The best and most efficient way to increase your search engine rankings is to get links to your site. Not only to your site, but your posts as well. This increase in links to your site will show the “popularity” of it to the search engines. When people like things online, they generally will either bookmark the site or write a post about it on their site and provide a link. By getting more backlinks than your competition (for the keyword you are targeting), you can beat them in the search engine rankings. This will drive quality traffic to your site which leads to better payouts on your Adsense clicks.

So, you might be saying “So how does all of this work? What is the best way to learn more about this?”

If you are truly serious about wanting to learn how to make this work and how simple it really is, there are a few sites that I recommend that you take a look at. These guys are the experts (notice no quotes, they are the real deal) and I have followed lots of the A-listers in the past. Take a look at Grizz’s blog where he writes a lot about how to make money with Adsense quite often. His site is one of the leading sites online because he practices what he preaches. Now, there are about 3 years worth of information on his site, so that can be quite a bit of info to weed through, however there is a new book that is out that condenses all of his methods and teaching down to readable portions. Plus, it has his recommendation and “stamp of approval”. Learn more about the Nomad’s Guide to Making Money Online. Trust me, I have read it and it follows exactly what Griz preaches, teaches and walks.

Another great option for you if you are more visual is to try out The Keyword Academy. This site is owned by Court and Mark, two great guys that have put together a system that really works. I have increased my Adsense income 7 times over what it used to be in 3 months by following their system. They teach, with videos, forums and more, how to do keyword research, find the best paying keywords that are worth your time to pursue, how to check out the competition, set up wordpress sites and more. You can join The Keyword Academy for a $1 trial for 30 days and have access to the videos and more. It is worth it just for the first couple of videos, it will open your eyes to show you a unique formula that will help you find the best paying keywords so you aren’t wasting your time.

Whew, this has been a long post! Please, if you have questions, ask. Let me know what you think!

If you are looking for a free site that will help you make money online with your sites, let me explain how Hubpages work. This site is free to join and is similar to Squidoo lenses. The major difference is that you can revenue share with Hubpages but you have 4 different options to make money. You can use Google Adsense, which is great for “Hubs” that you create that are informational in nature about a topic. You can also use eBay or Amazon.com modules in your Hubs that work really well if you write about topics that are product related.

The main thing to remember is that each Hub works best in getting traffic and clicks/sales if you write it specific to one topic/keyword/item/product. You can also add YouTube Videos, RSS Feeds, News Feeds, pictures and more to your Hub to increase the content and information on it.

Another important thing that makes Hubpages amazing for your niche sites and to make money online is that Google loves them! Unlike Squidoo lenses, Hubpages have a special “spider” we will call it that can scan the Hubs and determine if there are excessive links, affiliate links or if the content just plain sucks on it. Hubpages is NOT for spammers or crappy content.

I have several Hubs created and trust me, the more unique and better the content is that deals with a specific topic, the better your traffic will be. One particular Hub that I created was indexed by Google within 2 hours, was getting organic search engine traffic within 24 hours and had it’s first Adsense clicks within 2 days.

One important thing that you do need to understand is that you share the impressions with Hubpages. What this means is that you will receive 60 percent of the impressions and Hubpages receives 40 percent. You might think this is bad, however they still have to pay their bills and if you write great content and get the traffic, you will see results with Hubpages.

Read more about how to make money with Hubpages and let me know what you think with comments here or on the site.

Will what I write about actually make money? What if it doesn’t?

Great questions! So, let’s take a look at them and expand on them a bit as it relates to niche websites and making money online.

One of the toughest things of wanting to make money blogging or creating a niche website is the content. There is no doubt that no one can be an expert in every area or topic, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t put a site together that provides resourceful information to people.

But, if you are just wanting to create a blog and aren’t sure if anyone will read what you are writing, take heart because here is some information that you can really use.

I just created a blog for my wife to express herself with. She is very passionate about women’s issues and ministry for women. She didn’t think anyone would read her blog either, heck, it’s only about 2 months old. Well, she started writing, visited a couple of other blogs and left comments on them because she reads them (not a spam comment!!!) and also did a couple of link exchanges with some of the online magazines that have blogrolls.

She is getting some search engine traffic and also some new readers from these other sites. Her site is also a PR 1 now too! While that doesn’t sound like much, here is the good news for you and how it relates to your blog or niche site.

Anything is possible. Just because you don’t think anyone will read what you have to write about, don’t always believe that.

There are two ways to view your blogging efforts also that really set the tone with what you are trying to accomplish with making money online.

The first, are you creating a site, a niche site, strictly for monetization purposes? If so, then you generally only need 5 to 10 good quality posts of about 350 to 500 word each to create some good content. If you have 10 posts, and each post has 5 tags, then with the Google indexing methods and WordPress tag pages that are created, you have just created a potential 50 page site with only 10 posts.

Now that you have your site up and running, you now need to begin the boring task of building backlinks. Don’t forget to install your statistical analytics tracking stuff (I prefer Statcounter.com – FREE!!!!). When you begin to get some search engine traffic, then try the Adsense. Or if you are going with affiliate ads, put them up right away too.

Now, the second type of site is the general site. You could consider this a flagship site, or just a site that you want to blog about different topics on it. Don’t worry about if anyone reads what you are writing on it. Why? Because most of what you write on a general site might be seen by just a few people. However, you will occassionally strike it rich, so to speak, and land a great post that will rank well in the search engines.

Also, you can write about specific topics, brands, model numbers of electronics items, or what ever floats your boat.

I guess what all of my late night rambling here is saying is don’t worry so much about the monetization right away unless you are creating a niche site. If that is the case, then make sure your keywords are going to pay off for you and go for it.

If you have a topic or issue that you are passionate about, then write about it. Don’t worry about monetizing it just yet, but write your post, see what kind of traffic it develops. You can always go back later and expand on that post, or better yet, use it to link out to a newly created niche site that you have build focusing on the keywords in the article!

There are many ways to make money online and create income blogging, but sometimes you really need to just focus on writing good content and see what happens. Don’t let that fear of “someone might not read it” stop you from starting to learn how to make money online. It’s all a lot of experimentation and luck that goes into it as well, but with a little knowledge, you can control your destiny!

ps…if this post doesn’t make much sense, bear with me…i’m on pain meds for a bad shoulder injury…

This is a great question and an important one that you need to consider.  Chances are if you are looking for ways to earn an income or just supplement what you are already making, you don’t have extra money sitting around to waste.

Well, I can honestly say that you don’t need to spend $97 on an e-book to learn how to use a blog to make money online.  You don’t need to sign up for this “Secret” method to learn how search engine optimization works.  Heck, don’t even waste your time signing up for some “gurus” list in order to get a free e-book telling you the secrets to how Adsense works.

Why?

Well, there are many people (read scammers) that are ready to take your money telling you how to make money online.  So, don’t fall into the trap that so many new people make when trying to learn about blogging or making money online.  Often times you start reading these “great” sites that tell you that making money online is easy.  They will tell you that anyone can do it.

All you need to do is sign up for this e-book, or buy this service or product.  Yep, you just made them money by doing so.  Now, don’t get me wrong…there are some great services that can help you and even some decent e-books that can further your knowledge in how search engine optimization works, or how to optimize your wordpress blog.

But you don’t have to spend a dime to make money if you don’t want to!

There are some benefits to spending a little money each month for your own hosting and maybe a keyword service or article software, but you can easily make money with your blog or website without those things.

Example in point would be a great guy named “Griz”.  You see Griz is in a league of his own.  This guy is simple, straight forward and makes a ton of money with adsense online with his free sites.  Now, he does have some of his own sites, but he uses Blogger.com mostly. Don’t believe me? Read this post about his February income from making money online and this one dealing with an advance topic of popular topic niche blogging. Inspiring posts to read and topics that we will cover.

You see, it isn’t in what your server size is.  It’s not in what e-book or service you sign up for or own.

It comes down to knowing what works, doing it and repeating it.  Often.

So, here is the secret formula (I won’t charge you $97 for it, but you can donate it to me if you like!    )

First, you need to find a good keyword.  Google Adwords tool is a great one and it’s free.  Research your keywords and find a good one.

Secondly, do a Google search for the keyword and research what your keyword competition is.

Next you will want to register a blog for it.  Doesn’t matter if you go with blogger or your own hosted WordPress site.  You will want the keyword in the domain name.  If just the keyword is already taken, then add “guide” or “resource” or something else to it and come up with a unique dot com.

Now, right some good keyword focused posts on your site.  Write them about 500 words each, starting off with at least 5 posts.

Write a few more articles for Ezine Articles and GoArticles and get them published.  This will help get them indexed.

Now, build links.

Yep, this is the part that most people give up on.  Link building.  It’s not glamourous or pretty.  It can take time and really piss you off, but this is the most important part of making money with your site.

Not all links are created even, but a link is a link.  Find similar blogs to your keyword and ask for a link exchange.  Publish more articles (unique content) to more article directories.  Create some other sites on different IP addresses and link back (link farming).

Rinse and repeat.

I know, you are probably thinking about 10 thousand different questions right now, but it really is that simple.

I have already written about some of the topics posted here and have linked them for you.  I will be adding more posts and resources and adding them to this post also.

When it comes down to it, the more that you focus on one keyword with your site, write good and unique content for it and get keyword anchored links to your site, the better your success.  You might not conquer the keywords for Viagra or Credit Cards right off the bat, or ever, but with your career experience or hobby knowledge, you already have a wealth of information about topics that someone else probably doesn’t have.

Use that knowledge and experience and research those topics.  Find good paying keywords that have at least 1,000 or more (10,000 or more is better) in monthly search traffic and go for it.

So, while this post can’t answer ever step in detail or provide information about every step, please, please, please, don’t waste your money believing the hype that you have to have this ebook or that service. Most of the crap that is out there is old, outdated and written with the intention to get you to buy something else.

The simple answer is yes, you can really make money online without spending any money for anything. It takes finding the right keyword, writing good quality posts or articles about the keyword or topic and getting links to get your site into the top 3 search positions on Google.

As always, if you have a question, ask it!

So, you might be wondering what they hype about keywords are and why are they really important to making money online?

Well, if you found this site by a Google search or other search engine, what words did you type in to find this site? Those are keywords. Keywords are basically the words that people type into the search engines to find what they are looking for. Some keywords pay more than others of course, so this is where learning about keywords can really pay off (no pun intended).

When you first started looking into what to blog about to make money online chances are you have probably read some blogs that talk about how you should buy this ebook, or sign up for that program. Guarantees are often made that if you follow this or that method, you will make money.

Don’t believe it all! There is no real easy way to make money online. Only some time and persistence will pay off, so lets talk keywords!

With so many different things to blog about, I am going to write this post to be generic, not focused on any one keyword or topic, so follow along with the basic example and you will learn.

Once you have a topic that you are interested in, whether it is a hobby or passion that you like, or part of your job that you are knowledgeable about, there are tons of keywords for that topic. There are some really good paid programs that you can buy to help you research keywords, but lets focus on some free ones.

The first keyword tool that I use and recommend is the Google Adwords tool. Why not go right to the source of the traffic that you seek! Go ahead and open the Google Keywords Tool in another tab or page. You might need to log into your Google account, so if you don’t have one, take a minute and sign up for one.

Ok, back? Good, let’s keep going.

You will notice the box on the page that will let you select either to enter words or you can select for Google to scan a site and see what keywords it finds that relate to the site. Let’s focus on you entering some keywords that you know. For this example I will use “Lasik” to show you screen shots and explain what the results mean. You will have to enter a CAPTCHA to begin your search, so enter your keyword, or follow along with me by using “Lasik” without the quotes.

Now after you click enter the good ol’ Google will reveal some information to us to look at, but we will want to click on the “Choose Columns to Display:” button and select “Show All” and the results are what you can see below.

Now I didn’t copy the entire page in a screenshot because I want to explain a few things to help you understand about what the results mean. One of the first things you will notice is that the keywords are on the left in no particular order. The estimated Ad position is what Google is estimating the position for your ad if you paid the estimated average CPC (cost per click). We aren’t worried about what it will cost you, but what you could potentially make per click. While Google won’t come out and say, you can expect to make around 25% of what the Google Adwords tool says the Average Cost Per Click is worth.

The Advertiser competition is just what it says.  If you were looking to buy ads using these keywords, this bar is just an indication of what the competition is for the keyword.  More competition equals usually more costs.

The Average Search Volume, monthly search volume and search volume trend show estimations of the amounts of searches.  While Google won’t reveal exact search numbers, these are a pretty good indication of what to look for.  You don’t want to target a keyword that only gets 100 searches a month because the search volume really isn’t very high.  However, some argue that those are perfect keywords to target generally because they have lower competition, are easier to overtake in the search results and are generally a long tail keyword that you can use to target the larger, main keyword.

One extremely important aspect of using the Google Adword Tool is to select the right “Match” type.  While it automatically defaults to phrase, you will want to look for and select the “Exact” selection here.  Why?  Thanks for asking!

When you return the results for the “Lasik” keyword and it shows “Broad”, it is returning those words that appeared in any order.  There is not any rhyme or reason for which order the words were searched for.  For example, the keyword “lasik surgery” when returned in a “Broad” match means that someone could have searched for “Lasik Surgery in Texas” or “How can I find cheap lasik surgery”.  The term “lasik surgery” still appears and is counted in the “Broad” search results.

When you select “Phrase” from the match, you are pretty much getting the same thing as you did from the “Broad” search, however it is a little more exacting to phrases that we showed as an example when talking about the broad search results.

The best selection to make is the “Exact” search match.  This returns the exact words, in the exact order that they appear.  So, “lasik surgery” as an exact match means that the two words “lasik surgery” were searched for in that order with nothing else.  While these results are usually less than a “Broad” match, they are more accurate for what we want to do with keywords.

While I don’t want to drone on about the Google Adwords tool, it is a good one and it is free.  If you are just getting started, work with it some and learn about it.  Read some of the help files and things associated with it too as there is some good information there to help explain things a little more.

I will stop this post now, but will discuss another good free keyword tool in the next post for you to learn and try out.  Keywords are a pain in the neck, but can also be fun when you find something that is high paying and low competition.  After the next post we will put them together into what you really should do with your keywords and things will become a little more clear at that point.

When you are thinking or have just started a blog, you often start finding those “guru’s” that tell you how to make money with your blog. I won’t name them, but they can be called the “A-listers” just for reference. If you are like me, when you first started blogging you were excited about it, looking to find what really makes you happy, or just blogging about news, celebrities or other topics.

Then you realize you can make money with your blog.

Now comes the search for how to make money with your blog. Whether you use Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing or countless other search engines, there are tons of people telling you different ways to make money while blogging. Some people offer good advice. Others are just wanting to sell you this wonderful e-book that is full of the latest information and guarantees to make you an instant millionaire and wealthy beyond your wildest imagination with your blog. For only $49. Oh, wait, it’s $19. Well, for today only it’s $7! Man, what a bargain!

Well, guess how they are making their money online? They make their money by selling crap products that tell other people, usually newbies, how to make money online by selling crappy e-books.

This is so wrong in all the ways possible that I won’t even go there.

Here is what to blog about to make money online.

Your passion.

Yep, it’s that simple. If you are looking to begin blogging, and maybe you aren’t even wanting to make money with a blog yet, you have to have some passion for the topic. Whether you are blogging about gardening, custom cars or the weather, you have to have some type of passion to write about the topics that are there to be written about.

Your topics need to be popular amongst other people. You have to have some knowledge about something in order to write about it. You really need to ask yourself what is your reason for blogging. Are you wanting to blog to become popular online or to scratch your creative itch? So, if you have a favorite hobby that you really enjoy, why not write about it?

What do you write about when blogging? Well, you can write about the latest trends, newest tools, or upcoming products that will make your hobby or interest more popular.

This is one of the most important things that many new people (newbies) to blogging find confusing. While the so called gurus are telling you that you have to do it one way, you don’t. Sure you can try and follow them, but who is reading your blog that you are writing about how to make money online when you don’t have a clue about what you are doing or saying.

But, if your hobby is organic gardening and you start blogging about your experiences, what you are learning, new sites that have great information or the best place to find products, it won’t take long for you to start getting traffic and readers.

Once you start getting readers and traffic to your blog from the search engines, then you can start looking to monetize your site. Until then you are wasting your time, especially if you haven’t blogged before and don’t know about search engine optimization techniques, keyword selection and anchored text links.

If you want to learn more about those things, stick around, subscribe to the RSS feed and learn more about how to make money blogging. I strongly believe that anyone can learn to make money online, even with a free blogger blog and no money invested. It takes a little time, I will tell you that in advance and many people get frustrated and quit before the results start to show.

What you blog about to make money is really ultimately up to you. Only you know your passions or interests. Only you can make the decision to start blogging and learn how to blog and make money online blogging. What to blog about to make money is pretty easy to determine, just blog about your passions!

Update: You can make money online without blogging about your passion. It is called niche marketing. This is where you research the terms and phrases that people are searching for, check the online competition for those terms and phrases, and create websites focused on those topics. This process can follow several simple steps and over time (because only scams promise you to make thousands of dollars overnight) and with some effort on your part, you can begin to make money online. Read more about this process on my post that talks about the 3 steps to make money online. There are some great links for resources and the only ebook that I recommend called the Nomad’s Guide to Making Money Online.

Some of the information you will find is good information, some of it is bad. There are also bloggers that will try and sell you the “foolproof” way to make money with your blog that is a waste of your time and money. Heck, how do you think they are making their money online with their blog? They are selling you an ebook or software product that walks you through the steps of how to make an ebook and sell it to other bloggers.

You won’t find crap like that here.

If you are looking for a simple way, the most efficient steps to make money online with your blog, then stick around.

I will begin a series of articles that will be detailed to help the newest of bloggers and hopefully provide information to experienced bloggers that are wanting to make some money from their blog. If you are looking to expand into niche marketing and create new blogs, we’ll cover that too in good time.

So, let’s start with the basics. I will make no assumptions about what you know. Some of the information about blogging you might already know. That’s good! Help contribute to the conversations we are going to have. Be constructive and share your knowledge. Let’s get started with some myths about making money online with blogging and how they ruin the new blogger.

One of the first myths about how you can make money online with a blog is that you have to post a lot. This isn’t always true. It really depends alot on what your blog is about or who your audience is. If your site deals with a topic that changes frequently, such as the stock market or technology, you might need to post more frequently than someone with a blog about caring for your dog.

Oh, your audience. This is another myth that has been beaten into so many new bloggers by the so called “A-listers” that it makes me sick. There are two types of people that will visit your blog. The social traffic crowd, which come from social network sites such as StumbleUpon, Digg and other social bookmarking sites.

If you are wanting to gain a following and become a popular blogger, then this might be the way for you to go. Just don’t count on making much money with this. Especially if you are wanting to put Adsense on this site, you won’t make it. Social traffic to your site doesn’t click on ads and rarely buys items you are promoting.

Sure, there are exceptions to this rule with some of the more popular sites, but they have one thing going for them. They are targeting a specific topic for each post that people are looking for. They take a post, write a good article that is optimized for that specific topic and put a product with it that people will buy that will help solve that problem or fix an issue.

The next, and best kind of traffic that converts into sales and clicks on your ads is search engine traffic. Why does it work so well? It’s really simple really. If you are writing a post about a new product that will cure Acne and people are searching for it, then chances are much greater that you can monetize this post and site and make money.

This depends on another factor for your blog. Search Engine Optimization. These three simple words can make or break your site. One mistake many new bloggers make when trying to make money online with their site is that they go after the big keywords that are being searched for, such as “credit cards” or “car insurance”. This will lead to frustration and failure quickly. Why?

When going after keywords that people are searching for on Google, you need to check out your competition. You need to see what you can provide that they aren’t. What keywords can your blog target that they aren’t?

Take “car insurance” for example. You might not won’t make money going after that unless you really know what you are doing as far as keyword related backlinks, proper anchor text and how to fully SEO your blog. However, if you live near a town that has a pretty good population, maybe you could go after something like “Cheap car insurance in Cincinnati” or where ever you live. You might have a better shot at that one.

I know, this is a lot of information to take in. Your head is probably thumping right now with information overload and questions about what they hell I am talking about. Trust me, we will work it one step at a time. There are so many ways to make money blogging with your blog that each way is unique, however they most important methods of keyword research, focused anchor text backlinks and on-site SEO will come to you.

I hope you stick around and enjoy this series on how to make money blogging!

When you are beginning to blog about whatever you want, sometimes it is easy to overlook the fact that if you lose focus you will fail.  What do I mean?  Well, if you begin to get overwhelmed with issues like affiliate programs, adsense, keyword research, search engine optimization and other topics, you can easily lose focus on the fact that you are blogging about a certain topic.

If you lose focus on your topic of choice, you will notice that your posts are less informative and your readership will suffer.  Now, before you say that you can’t make money blogging about a topic and you have to know all of that stuff, let me point out a couple of pitfalls to avoid when blogging.

First, there are two types of blogs and bloggers.  One is a blogger that enjoys writing about a certain topic, whether it is about food or sports or how to take care of your dog.  This type of blogger doesn’t really concern themselves with all of the aspects of making money online with their blog, yet.  While their main focus is writing quality articles and interacting with their readers, making money with their blog is on their mind, but it doesn’t drive the focus of the site.

The second type of “blogger”, if you want to call them that, is more of an netropreneur.  Their main focus when creating a blog or site isn’t the fact that they want readers.  Heck, they could care less if anyone stops and signs up for their RSS feed.  Why?  Because social network traffic doesn’t click on ads or affiliate banners.  The blogopreneur (like that word?  I just made it up!) is concerned with the aspects of keyword research, SEO and getting search engine rankings for their site and/or respective pages.  They want the search engine traffic that is looking for a cure, or fix to the problem they have so when the get to the site, they click out on adsense or affiliate ads.

Those are the two types of bloggers, in a wide explaination.  It really depends on your focus that you want to experience.  One of the main things that you need to consider if you have never blogged before is that you should start off blogging about a topic that you enjoy.

So many people start off chasing the big areas of “make money online” or “credit cards” or “debt relief” that they are competing against giants in the industry.  You won’t get far and will get frustrated and quit.  Trust me, you will.

If you want to experience blogging that will lead to income, here is a good case example to look at.

There is a site that deals with Cats.  Not just a normal picture of a cat, but funny pictures of cats with strange headings or baby-like captions on them.  The site started off as a spoof site, but when traffic started heading into the hundreds of thousands of page views per day, it was decided that this spoof blog was heading into something special.

icanhascheezburger.com became a success almost instantly.  The blog sold in 2007 sometime for probably over $1 million and made some people wealthy.  The phenomenon of this blog is special and worth looking at.  It started as a spoof of cat pictures with funny captions.  It ended up making people millionaires.  Why?

Well, when you cater to something that people enjoy reading or finding and you enjoy writing about it, you can make money online with it.  There is a great article about the icanhascheezburger.com site that appeared on Businessweek.com site.  It is worth the read.

So, where does this leave you if you are wanting to learn how to blog or make money blogging?  Pretty simply the easiest way to start off is to write about something you know about.  If you enjoy scrapbooking stamps, create a blog about how to use them or make pages with them.  If you collect old ford tractors, then blog about finding parts for them or the history of farming implements that go with them.

There are many things that you can blog about.  Writing about something you enjoy or are familiar with is the first step in getting started.  Trust me, the money will come later.

The postings in a blog are typically related in some way but they can be about any subject the blogger desires. Bloggers may maintain a blog for a number of different reasons and these blogs may be private or public in nature. This article will describe the difference between a private and public blog and will also explain blogging professionally as well as blogging for personal reasons.

Private vs. Public Blogs

Blogs can also be private or public. Private blogs are ones in which only the blogger and others who have been approved by the blogger can view the blog postings. Public blogs are available to any users of the Internet. A blogger may opt to make a blog private or public depending on whether or not he is comfortable with others reading the blog. For example a blogger who creates a blog for the purpose of venting about frustrations in life may opt to keep a blog private so friends or family members are not able to read these vents.

Conversely a blogger who is blogging for a purpose such as to promote a cause will likely opt to make the blog public so his message can reach as many Internet users as possible. However, bloggers who create a blog to express themselves through their writing, poetry or other form of expression may opt to make the blog private or public depending on whether or not they want to make these personal feelings available to others.

Some bloggers in this situation will make the blog public because they want to reach others who may either share their feelings or may benefit from reading their blogs. There may be other bloggers in this situation who will make the blog private because they do not want others to see these personal forms of expression.

Blogging Professionally

Blogging can actually be done as a source of income for some bloggers. There are a number of companies who maintain a network of bloggers and pay bloggers to maintain a blog in the network. These bloggers may be compensated per post, according to the number of page views the blog receives or through a combination of the number of posts and the number of page views. A career as a blogger requires a great deal of dedication. The blogger must be willing and able to update the blog regularly and to keep the blog interesting to readers.

Blogging for Personal Reasons

Blogging can also be done for personal reasons. Some bloggers use their blog to stay in touch with family and friends while others use it to express themselves or to share information with others. Blogs created for personal reasons can be a great deal of fun but the blogger must be sure to avoid allowing the process of maintaining the blog to become a stressful situation. A blog which is maintained for personal reasons should be an enjoyable experience for the blogger.