Back in May, I started a series of posts aimed at satisfying the curiosity that of some of my friends and colleagues have about blogging. As sometimes life get hectic, unfortunately some projects need to be tabled for a while. I’ve finally found some time to finish the third and final post from this series. If you’re reading this post, hopefully you’re doing so after reading: How I Make Money From Blogging Parts 1 and 2. If you haven’t read them, you’re new to blogging or you just need a refresher, you might want to go back to Part 1 and read it over before continuing. If you’re ready for Part 3, here we go.

OK. So, hopefully by now you have taken some time, visited the links that I recommended in the first two posts and read all of the information available. Some of you may have even already started writing and publishing blog posts. If you’re one of these new bloggers, congratulations and welcome to the blogosphere!

Now, let’s get down to business. As I said in How I Make Money From Blogging Part 2, in this post I want to cover how to monetize the content of your posts and provide your blog yet another income stream. There are a few different ways you can do this. When you’re first starting out blogging, your audience may not be large enough for your to command big dollars when trying to sell links within your posts, but don’t worry, there are other ways to make money within the content of your posts.

An excellent way for new bloggers to start earning some money from the content of their posts is by promoting affiliate products. I have written about how to make money with affiliate marketing in the past. It definitely has it’s advantages, especially when you’re just starting out. Be sure to be sincere when writing about the products you promote. The best way to do this is to actually purchase or use the products and services that you intend to write about before you promote them. Believe it or not, it is very easy to tell when reading a post about an affiliate product whether the writer is actually speaking from experience with the product/service or if they’re just writing their review from a press release or copying and pasting product info between some of their own words.

Yeah, it happens. Unfortunately, more often than you would think it would.

Remember, when you blog, your readers are your life line. Write for them and give them your honest feelings about the products, services or programs you promote. Give them the quality they deserve and they will return to read more. In time, they will readily follow your links, buy the products you recommend and maybe even tell their friends about the great info they receive from your blog posts.

Once you’ve been blogging for a while and you’ve grown your reader base, you should be able to start selling links within your posts through a service like Inlinks. If your reader base is large enough and active enough, you may even be able to command a pretty decent price for links within your blog posts. That’s right, when your blog starts to get enough traffic, people will actually pay to have links to their products, services or websites placed right within your blog content!

As I said earlier, Inlinks is a great service for selling links within your posts. In fact they even provide a service that helps you promote your blog or website in the same way. Those of you just starting out, can purchase links through their service to be posted on higher traffic blogs from within their network of bloggers for a low monthly fee starting at just $10 per month. A link from a high traffic blog is a great way to gain much needed exposure for your blog and help you to spread the word about yourself and your blog.

Now you know How I Make Money From Blogging and you should be able to follow my advice and do the same for yourself. Of course, your success will depend on how consistently you post to your blog, the quality of your posts and how effectively you promote yourself and your blog.

Hmmm, do I smell a blog series about promotion on the horizon? The only way you’ll know for sure is to come back and read some more! If you want to be sure you don’t miss out you can always subscribe to my RSS feed or get this blog delivered directly to your email inbox. See you soon.

Recently I started a series of posts aimed at satisfying the curiosity that of some of my friends and colleagues have about blogging. This is the second post from this series. If you’re reading this post, hopefully you’re doing so after reading: How I Make Money from Blogging Part 1. If not and you’re new to blogging, you might want to follow the preceding link and read it over before continuing. If you’re ready for Part 2, here we go.

OK. So, hopefully by now you have taken some time, visited the links that I recommended in the first post, read all of the information available and decided which blogging platform you want to use. Some of you may have even already purchased a domain name and/or a web hosting package. If you’re one of these people, congratulations, you’re well on your way.

The next step is setting up your stand alone blogging software on your hosting account web server. This can be a rather complicated step for those “less computer literate” people out there, but it doesn’t have to be!

If you’ve taken my advice from earlier and set-up your hosting account on HostGator, they have excellent step-by-step video tutorials on how use their Fantastico Deluxe script to help you install the free blogging platform from WordPress (also suggested earlier). In fact, Hostgator even has dedicated online support specialists that will do everything they can to help you through any problems you may encounter along the way.

Once you’re all set-up on your web server, you’re ready to start putting your own stamp on your blog!

Now, it’s up to you to get those creative juices flowing, but before you start writing posts there are a few things you will want to take care of first. The design, look and feel etc. of your blog is very important in making a first impression on the reader. Once again, it isn’t the sole factor that will determine your success, but good design and layout is always better than poor design and an ugly color scheme that will turn off your readers. Make sure that when you pick a WordPress theme to install on your blog (the default theme it comes with is boring) it fits your taste, niche, vision, color scheme, etc. There are tons of quality themes available for free from the WordPress Theme Directory, so you shouldn’t have any trouble finding something that fits your style or niche.

Another thing you’ll want to look for in a theme is room for ad placement. Selling advertising is a major money maker when it comes to blogging. You’ll want to make sure that the sidebar of your blog theme is laid out in such a way that there is ample room for banner advertisements and ad widgets. When you first get started blogging, you probably won’t be able to sell much advertising space right away until you have a large enough audience and good quality traffic, so it’s a good idea to start out by placing ad widgets and/or affiliate banners in your side bar to monetize your blog until you can drum up that a large audience and command top dollar for your ad space.

Personally, I use the services of WidgetBucks and AdBrite. I have found that they perform the best by serving a mix of paid-per-click and paid-per-impression advertising models. Another popular choice is Google Adsense, but I have found that both of the others perform better for my particular websites. The same may not be true for yours. Always keep careful track of your ads conversion stats and test different ads from time to time to see which ads are performing best for you. You can also fill some ad space with affiliate banners to generate commissions from your traffic. If you need a refresher, I have written about how to make money with affiliate marketing in the past. It has it’s advantages, especially when you’re just starting out.

So, let’s re-cap. By now you should have decided which blogging platform you want to use, chosen and/or purchased a domain name, purchased a web hosting package, set-up WordPress on your web server, picked a theme/design/colors for your blog and chosen your advertising method to monetize your blog.

WHEW!

When you say it like that, it really seems like a lot of work. But it wasn’t so bad. Was it?

If you think about it in terms of what it takes to start-up a real, money making business, it really isn’t much work at all. You should have been able to do it all by yourself and if you’ve followed my advice up until this point, you’ve only spent about $20 US ($10 domain name, $10 first month web hosting) on start-up costs!

When you’ve reached this point successfully, you’re ready to start filling your blog with posts that will capture your readers interest, provide them value and make then want to return to read more. In the next post in this series I plan on covering how to monetize the content of your posts to provide your blog yet another income stream.

Stay Tuned!