If you’re starting out in blogging for the first time it is easy to get ahead of yourself. In this post Aileen Journey from the Problem Solver Blog shares some tips on getting going with your new blog.

Image by candrews

Many new bloggers read everything possible on successful blogs. There’s so much information out there, in fact sometimes it’s way too much information. I find that my blog is not necessarily far enough long to take advantage of all the information. What happens sometimes is that beginning bloggers start to feel overwhelmed and like they’ll never be able to do what’s necessary to have a successful blog. I am a new blogger. I have started and run a variety of other businesses like a retail store and an online store, but the blogosphere is new to me

I went the traditional business route and got my MBA in 1996. The world has changed quickly since then. I’ve been blogging for just over 6 months, but started my only currently running blog at the beginning of December 2008. I only “discovered” blogs about 8 months ago, previously thinking they were all personal journals. The way I see them now is that they are mini-magazines, some more mini than others. They allow people to pinpoint their exact interests and just read the information that they’re interested in.

One: Consider your reason for blogging.

Go further than to “make money” or “become famous.” Those are perfectly good reasons for blogging, but what about them are what you want. What in particular do you want to become famous for, remember John Hinckley, Jr. shot Jodie Foster to become famous. I want to be known as an expert in my field of helping people figure out how to get what they want, personally, with their children and in their relationships. As for making money, are you thinking of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous or are you thinking about enough extra money to go out to eat regularly? What about other motivations? Are you trying to convey some point of view or opinion, do you want people to pay attention to some issues, do you want people to support you in some situation? Every time you consider using a new idea you’ve read about online for successful blogs go back and see if it fits in with your goal. Will it help you get where you want or would it really be better on another kind of blog? Remember, a blog that earns money is a business. All businesses need specific goals or mission statements.

Two: Do your research.

Go through AdWords Keyword Tool or Worktracker and find which phrases and words within your topic are the highest searched and the least used by others. Make a list of them in order. Make sure you only search for terms related to your topic. People arriving at your site from unrelated words will make them annoyed, not ready to subscribe. Use one of the terms you found to use as the title of your site and perhaps as titles for your categories.

Three: Put together a basic blog.

It’s great to try to get every single cool widget and plug-in on your site as the big sites have, but start with the basics. Make sure you have your feed/subscribe information prominent on each page and after each post (feedburner’s feedflare can do it easily), put together an About page. Then choose a theme, set up some categories out of the terms you found through your research, make sure your RSS is working and that’s the basics of what you need to begin with. Down the line you can add more features. Don’t try to do everything at once.

Four: Start writing posts for each of your beginning categories so there’s something for people to find when they arrive at your site.

Don’t worry about making these brilliant. Write them up quickly in rough draft then go over them and edit them. Run spell-checker and grammar checker. Don’t let posts full of mistakes be posted, but don’t try to write it in perfect verse or anything.

Fifth: Get out there!

If you’ve used your research from step two then you can relax about search engines for now. They’ll find you when they find you. Immediately, though, you can get your own site out there. Comment on other blogs (use your blog title as your name), send guest posts to the blogs that you like and read regularly, and use whatever social networking sites you already use to tell others about your new blog.

Sixth: Be patient and keep it up.

This is not my first business and not even my first online business. Things take time. Try to look at your blog every day and see what might need a little tweak. If you can find some truly computer-incompetent people, ask them to look over your blog and figure out how to subscribe. If they can’t do it then ask them what might help them. When everything else is in place, choose the kind of monetizing option you want, AdSense, affiliate marketing, advertisers, etc. and start working on setting those up. No matter what you choose, it won’t do much until your blog has some kind of traction. Keep working on improving and enjoying the writing on your blog while you work to get it to take hold.

Blogging as a business is hard, as any business is. Don’t discount your efforts just because you haven’t made it to the big time in a few months. Instead of getting overwhelmed trying to perfect every piece of your blog business, do the basics to start with and build on it from there.

Aileen Journey writes and manages the Problem Solver Blog as well as writing books, teaching college online and problem solving life with three children.

Make Money Blogging

Do you want to make money blogging? If you do – you’re not alone. More and more bloggers are finding that blogging is a profitable medium. Whether it be to earn a few extra dollars a week to feed their coffee habit, or making enough money to stop them having to get a part time job to get through college, or whether they’ve got it to a point where they are able to make a full time living from their blogging – there are tens of thousands of bloggers making money from blogging.

In this page I want to share some information for beginners on making money from their blogs.

I will start by sharing my own top Money Making Methods (updated regularly) but below that point you to some great resources and teaching on how to increase your income from blogging.

What follows is a quick summary of my main income streams from blogging. Before you read it though – keep in mind that every blog is unique in how it can make money. Some of the following income streams will work on some blogs a lot better than others – the key is to experiment with as many as possible and see what works best for you.

The following income streams (from a number of blogs) have helped me to earn a six figure income each year for the last three years from blogging. I’ve ranked them from highest to lowest.

I hope you find it useful to see the mix and variety of ways that I earn a living from blogging.

1. AdSense

Despite not using it here at ProBlogger any more (here’s why) I continue to use AdSense with amazing effect on my other blogs. I have them all set to show image and text based ads and find that 250×300 pixel ads work best (usually with a blended design). I don’t have much luck with their ‘referrals’ program but their normal ads work a treat and continue to be the biggest earner for me.

2. Chitika

Chitka continues to be a great performer for me on my blogs. They work best on product related blogs although their recent announcement of their Premium ad unit is exciting as they now offer ads with a non product focus that I’m hearing great conversions on (I have one reader who is getting $28 CPM on this ad unit).Chitika offers a range of ad units that I experiment with. I find their eMiniMalls work best and that Related Product Units are also good. Their Shoplincs product isn’t performing as well as it once did for me – mainly because I’ve been promoting it less and have driven less traffic to it. Over the time I’ve been using Chitika they’ve now earned me over a quarter of a million dollars – I can’t recommend them enough!

3. Private Ad Sales/Sponsorships

Private ad sales directly to advertisers have continued to grow over the last few months and as a result they’re now my third highest income stream. I expect them to overtake both Chitika and AdSense in the coming months. This includes ad sales of the 125 x 125 ads here at ProBlogger as well as a campaign or two at Digital Photography School.

4. Amazon Associates

Amazon’s affiliate program has been one of my big movers in the last 12 months. I used to make a few odd dollars from it – however in recent times it has become a significant earner for me (as I’ve shared previously). This quarter it grew even more than previously as a result of continued growth of DPS where I recommend books, software and cameras.

5. Miscellaneous Affiliate Programs

I run a variety of affiliate programs on my blogs – most of which bring in smaller amounts of money that don’t really justify a category of their own. These include – - Digital Photography Secrets (a camera technique series), Pro Photo Secrets (a great photoshop product) , Yaro’s Blog Mastermind Mentoring Program (about to open the doors again), SEO Book (Aaron’s legendary resource) and the excellent Teaching Sells course (which just continues to grow in what it offers to it’s members in terms of content).

The great thing about many of these programs is that they are of such high quality that they sell themselves and I am being emailed from readers who sign up to them thanking me for the recommendation!

6. Shopzilla

As I wrote recently – Shopzilla has really impressed me with how it’s performed over the last few weeks. It’s actually doing well enough to debut in this list at #6. The ads are similar to Chitika but the click values have been higher for me to this point. They don’t offer quite as many options as Chitika does in terms of types of ads but for a new ad network there’s definitely promising signs. I’m looking forward to seeing how they continue to develop!

7. ProBlogger Job Boards

The job boards here at ProBlogger continue to grow each month in the number of advertisements that are being bought. This enabled me to invest most of the money that they’d earned a while back into getting a new back end for the boards and to redesign them. It hit me today that the boards are now bringing in around $1000 a month in revenue which is pretty nice considering that they are so low maintenance to run. They also offer a service to readers and add value to the overall blog.

The only problem that I face with the job boards is that there are so many bloggers looking for work that the demand for jobs far exceeds the supply. On the good side of things is that advertisers are reporting getting amazing quality of applications.

8. WidgetBucks

Another newcomer to this list is WidgetBucks – another ad network that ProBlogger readers will be familiar with.

WidgetBucks is similar to Chitika and Shopzilla in many respects and works well on product related sites. It does best on sites with US traffic (the reason I’ve not used it as much as I get a lot of international traffic) so if you have a product related site with a US audience it’d be a no brainer to try out WidgetBucks. I’m hoping they’ll continue to expand their offerings in terms of ad types and visitor location.

Disclaimer – WidgetBucks are an advertiser on ProBlogger

9. Miscellaneous Advertising Programs

I also play with a number of other ad networks. Some I run as tests to see if I should review them here – and some are just advertising that run in the background on some of my smaller blogs. These include ShoppingAds, Feedburner RSS ads, Vizu (a poll advertising system), Kontera and Bidvertiser. Together these don’t add up to major earnings for me – not because they are not good, but because I don’t use them heavily (a blog can only run so many ads on it).

I think that that covers most of it although it’s worth mentioning that last time I did this list I also included TextLinkAds which used to be every bloggers favorite way to make money blogging by selling text links. I’ve stopped using them due to Google cracking down on them (read more about this here) but it’s worth noting that many bloggers still use them successfully – I advise to proceed with caution. Disclaimer – TLA are an advertiser on ProBlogger

Useful Resources for Bloggers Wanting to Make Money Blogging

A lot has been written on the topic of making money online from blogs. There is a lot of wonderful information out there – but also a lot of hype and sometimes dangerous information.

Below are a number of articles that I’ve written exploring some of the different ways that bloggers make money.

To read more from Darren go to his site.  http://www.problogger.net/make-money-blogging/

Expert Guidance! Topics Include Blogging, Market Research, Affiliate Programs, Web Design, Problem Avoidance And So Much More! Updated Completely For 2008.

Learn Affiliate Marketing using a Step-by-Step Plan

In the course of my work as an Internet marketing consultant as well as publisher of a very popular newsletter for webmasters and affiliate marketers, I’ve heard all of the ‘How do I?’ questions.

Using a step-by-step plan to business-building, the ‘Super Affiliate Handbook’ answers all of the questions you will have and many, many more. Here are some examples of what you will learn:

• You get 222 information-packed pages of practical tips and real-life examples of WORKING affiliate sites (Note: Many Affiliate Managers recommend the Super Affiliate Handbook to their affiliates. In fact, Anik Singal makes it required reading for his staff. )
• “How To” strategies to save you money, time, and effort while building your affiliate marketing business.
• Get an easy-to-understand 5-step overview of the business-building process.
• Discover the top 25 mistakes that ‘normal’ affiliates make, and how to AVOID them.
• How to create a web site that keeps visitors coming back for more.
• 29 ways to market your affiliate sites online and off.
• Why you must stay away from the ‘flea market’ approach to Internet marketing.
• How to assess a market for profitabilty.
• Discover which products are actually sold online.
• Learn which programs to avoid and when to drop others.
• Where to find free software that will save you both time and money.
• Learn how to negotiate a raise in your commissions.
• Learn how to stop Thieves from Stealing YOUR Commissions.

…and there’s more… MUCH MORE! You will also Learn:

• Which 6 factors you MUST consider when choosing a domain name.
• How to Promote Associate Programs and Products with a Newsletter.
• How to use Signature Files to Gain MORE Visitors.
• How Forums can bring you more traffic.
• About software that lets you build a 1,000-page site in mere seconds!
• Learn which methods bring traffic to your site FAST.
• 9 Ways to Get Traffic to Your Site for FREE.
• The TRUTH about reciprocal linking.
• How writing a simple ezine article can bring more traffic to your site for FREE.
• How to Get MORE sales from YOUR site even though you are selling the same product as thousands of other affiliates.
• Learn EXACTLY what Super Affiliates do that other affiliates don’t do.
• The 20 questions that You MUST get answers to BEFORE you join an affiliate program.
• My favorite places to advertise.
• Which software finds profitable niche topics and saves HOURS, even DAYS of manual labor.
• How to write compelling product endorsement.
• Why you don’t want to use the marketing material provided by some affiliate programs.
• 6 Essential Components that EVERY successful web site has in place.

You will also…

• Discover how Keyword and Niche Market Research just got a whole lot easier.
• Learn how to Install a Blog in 7 easy steps with screenshots to show you every step of the process.
• Learn how to Post to your Blog.
• Learn how to put a new Page on your Blog.
• See how to add Categories to your Blog.
• Learn how to Set File Permissions with and without FTP.
• See exactly how to Install Links in your posts and pages.
• Learn how to put Images in your Posts and Pages.
• See exactly how to Install a New Theme (look) for your blog.
• Learn more about Contextual Advertising and where to find the most recommended contextual advertising networks.
• See how to put Google Adsense on your blog.
• See 97 Screenshots of how everything works!

To find out more CLICK HERE