Recently I have been flooded with questions from friends and colleagues about blogging. For the most part, people seem to want to know how much I make and how much effort I have to put in to make what I make. But more importantly, they want to know how THEY can make money from blogging. So, I decided to put together a series of blog posts here to share my two cents with the world and have somewhere to point all of those people to.

First of all, let me say this. If you want to make money online doing anything, I strongly suggest that you do your research on blogging and learn to properly incorporate blogging as a major part of whatever you are doing. Blogs lead to profits in many ways. They build brand awareness, promote your product/service, drive traffic to your websites and reel in new customers.

All great blogs have one thing in common. They meet the needs and wants of those who visit them and make them hungry for more. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. This takes time. If you’re just starting out blogging, you will (more than likely) not have a huge following of readers overnight. However, if you consistently write good quality content that engages your readers, they will come back for more and maybe even tell their friends about your blog. Believe me, there is NOTHING like FREE word of mouth advertising!

Now, before we get ahead of ourselves, there are a few necessary steps that every blogger must first deal with before getting started. The first thing you will need to do is purchase a domain name and find a web host for your blog. Sure, you can get a free blog from many of the available blogging platforms/services, but if you’re serious about carving out your own niche and making money with your blog for the long haul, I strongly suggest you get your own domain name and hosting account. GoDaddy.com is the World’s Largest Domain Name Registrar and their prices are very hard to beat. They also provide several web hosting packages that you can bundle together with your domain name purchase. This should save you some money (depending on your own individual needs) and keep everything all in one place.

I personally use the services of HostGator to host all of my websites. I have used them for more than 4 years now. They are extremely reliable, have excellent customer service and provide me with all the disk space and bandwidth I need for about $10 US/month. Oh yeah, in order to make paying for these online services (and many more) as convenient as possible, I also recommend getting a PayPal account. PayPal is a global leader in online payment solutions with more than 70 million active accounts worldwide. Their services are completely safe and reliable. I use them on a daily basis and if you’re looking to make money online, then so should you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with starting out on a free service, like those provided by Blogger or WordPress.com. These services work just fine, but you do give up some control and you never really “own” your blog. Creating a stand alone blog will give you much more flexibility and control over content, style and design. Furthermore, you’ll control your own ad space, which is what you need to maximize your blog’s ability to make money.

Using this method to create and publish your blog is a little more work, but only slightly more technical thanks to the stand-alone version of the free blogging platform from WordPress.org. They have made it incredibly easy to install and once you’re up and running, future upgrades can be accomplished with one simple click. Their stand-alone blogging platform can be added to an existing website (or a new one) and will have added SEO (search engine optimization) benefits.

If you’re serious about starting a blog to make money online, I strongly suggest you take the time and put together a plan before starting. Try to figure out what you want to write about and who you want to address as your target audience. You may even want to write a few blog post drafts before you start so that you can get a good feel for what you want to write about. It’s always a good idea to keep a few drafts written ahead of what you publish anyway. Sometimes life can get hectic awfully quick. Having a little cushion of pre-written drafts that can be published during those times never hurts.

You’ll also want to choose a good, unique domain name that is easy to remember and in some way ties in with the topic of your blog. Take your time on this one. Do your best, but don’t kill yourself over the decision either. While your domain name will be with you for the life of your blog, it isn’t the sole factor that will determine your success. That being said, a clever domain name never hurts either.

Well, that should be enough info to get most of you aspiring bloggers out there started. Check out the info and services recommended at the links above, take some time to put together an outline of what you want to accomplish then come back here and look for the next post in this series. See you soon.

This is the sixth and final post in the series I started last week called Blog, Tweet and Make Money on Vacation. If all has gone well, we are enjoying our last day in the Florida sun at the end of a fun-filled, yet relaxing week of vacation. We’ve spent a few beautiful days at the beach here in Cocoa Beach Florida relaxing in the sand and swimming in the ocean. We had great days at Sea World’s Discovery Cove and Busch Gardens, spent the rest of the time visiting with family and we even managed to watch some of the NHL Playoffs on satellite TV, which us Canadians just can’t go without at this time of year.

I gotta tell ya, it sure beats the typical week.

While we’re packing today and getting ready to go to the airport for our flight home, this blog post has been automatically published here. In fact, this post has also been tweeted to 2 of my 4 twitter profiles, along with several other updates to all 4 of those twitter profiles.

Remember, this is all being done on auto-pilot. I don’t have a laptop, I didn’t bring a cell phone and I do not have Internet access where I am staying while in Florida this week. This brings me back once again to the point of this series, which is very straight forward and simple.

While I was out enjoying my vacation with the family this week, the little bit of time I spent last week putting together this series of blog posts, scheduling them with WordPress and scheduling tweets to my Twitter profiles with HootSuite is taking care of my business, driving traffic to my blogs/websites and hopefully making me some money.

Don’t forget, you can check out the all the updates that were tweeted to my Twitter profiles this week yourself by visiting @SteveWestfall, @GetPaidBeSocial, @Where2Look and @TrendyJewelry. Please feel free to follow any of the profiles you like.

Oh yeah, if you’ve enjoyed this series please feel free to post your comments or discuss the techniques being presented on any of the posts. We can all learn from the input of others. I hope that those of you that followed the series have learned something or at least got some ideas about how you can put these techniques to work for yourself or your business.

That’s the end of this series, but there will be many more posts here in the future filled with money making tips and techniques. Following the Twitter profiles listed above is a great way to get updates. Feel free to come back as often as you like.