Blogging as a career

The fact is that it is absolutely possible to make a living with a career in blogging. Well-known expert bloggers like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net and Yaro Starak of Entrepreneurs-Journey.com have had great success blogging, with some of these top bloggers making six figures a year.

Having said all of that, you also need to know that most bloggers fail to make blogging a career. If you are considering blogging as a career, there are three specific things that you need to do in order to be successful:

1) Be Patient. Successful blogging takes time. If you want to have a career in blogging, you have got to put in the time and energy needed to make your blog successful. Writing your blog posts is only a small portion of this endeavor. You need to spend time every day building channels of communication with other bloggers and other web sites. You need to spent time every day marketing your blog. You need to spend time every day looking at the various monetization options available to you. Beyond this, you have to realize that it takes many months for a blog to become successful, and that your blogging career will probably take as much as six months to a year to really get started.

2) Write good Content. Content is King. You’ve heard this a thousand times by now. Everybody tells you that the key to a successful blogging career is producing good content. The reason they tell you this is that it is TRUE. If you want to make blogging your career, you need to hone your writing skills so that you are really on top of your competition. Beyond this, you need to be creative in the way you approach content, and consider using unique methods, from video blogging to podcasting, to provide value to your readers. Without good content, all of the marketing in the world can’t save your blog, or give you a career in blogging.

3) Choose the right monetization techniques. For most bloggers, Google AdSense isn’t going to provide you with a full-time income. You need to have other forms of monetization, whether it is affiliate income, direct ad sales, or some other sort of monetization. The best forms of monetization are going to be those that are recursive – that pay you over and over again as time goes on. A good example of recursive income is selling an affiliate membership-type product that pays you a portion of the customer’s membership fees every month, long after they have signed up.

While doing these three things won’t guarantee you will be able to make a career from blogging, you can be certain that you won’t make it as a blogger if you don’t do them.

Making Money With Your Blog

Profit blogging is a popular method of making an income online these days and even if you are new to the world of blogging, you can jump in on the action by setting up your blog so that it’s offering products through affiliate promotions, as well as with contextual advertising via Google Adsense, or Text Link Ads.

If your blog is a popular one, you could feature merchandise through services like www.PrintFection.com , www.CafePress.com or www.LuLu.com and let your visitors show their support while getting something in return.

If your blog is new and you are still establishing an online identity with your visitors, you could start with paid content, such as by offering ebooks, guides, reports or other downloads.  For many, developing their own products is a great way to make money with their site however if you aren’t a skilled writer or aren’t comfortable creating your own product, you could browse marketplaces such as www.PayDotCom.com or www.ClickBank.com and select products that you could showcase on your website, earning revenue through commissions.

Once your blog starts to generate traffic and a following, you could integrate services such as Text Marks, which allows you to charge your blog readers for instant text alerts whenever your blog is updated, and of course, you could try your hand at “blog begging”, by asking your visitors for donations such as the “Buy Me A Beer” (or other drink product) plugin, or by posting your Amazon Wish List for all to see.

You can also make money with your blog by simple publishing advertisements, through networks such as Yahoo Publishers, Value Click, Tribal Fusion or Chitika.

And finally, if you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do a bit of work, you could make money through blog services such as by accepting projects and assignments from blog marketplaces like: http://www.bloggerjobs.biz/or http://www.bloggersforhire.com/

You can check out the “Blog Profit Swipe File” for details on additional income opportunities.

Blog Profit Swipe File

If you are interested in making money with your blog, you will want to sign up for an account at some of the more popular services that offer blog based projects and assignments to those who are both new and established bloggers.

For many, these services offer a great way to supplement their existing income while they continue to grow their blog and develop a reputation in their niche markets, while others rely exclusively on these programs to pay for their hosting costs and expand their business online.

To help you get started, choose a handful of programs below and register for your free account. Then, explore the opportunities to determine what offers will work best for your blog.

Expo Active

As a publisher of ExpoActive, you agree to display ads on your website in return for financial compensation, when you provide relevant and quality traffic to their advertisers.

Ad Brite

• Create an account for free.
• Create your custom ad zone.
• Copy and paste the code to your site.
• After your zone is approved—within 24 hours—targeted ads will start running on your site.

BidVertiser
You get paid for every visitor that clicks on an ad. Our goal is to enable you to make as much as possible from your advertising space, by letting advertisers bid on your ad space. We pay monthly, either by check, or instantly through PayPal with a minimum of only $10

Double Click, Inc
Drive revenue by making inventory more valuable and selling more of it. Make your premium inventory more valuable and your advertisers more loyal by driving quality traffic to your site. Improve campaign performance with our advanced search, rich media and optimization tools

Indeed
The Indeed Jobroll is an easy way to add fresh and relevant job listings to your website or blog. The Jobroll can be added to your site in minutes, is continuously updated with new pay-per-click job links and can be targeted to the interests and locations of your users. You get paid when your users click on the jobs in your Jobroll – there’s no need to sell job postings or deal with clients.

Chitika
Chitika is a proven channel for targeting on-line consumers and qualified buyers. For all publishers, Chitika is an easy-to-use platform for earning daily ad revenue.

Quigo Network (Adsonar, Feedpoint)

What may begin as incremental income can quickly become a significant portion of your overall ad revenue. Meet demand for performance-based products and attract new advertisers. Watch your revenues grow.

Value Click, Inc

Generate maximum revenue from all standard in-page and out-of-page formats, rich media, video, e-mail lists and registration paths.

Yahoo Publisher Network
Display contextual advertising on your website via the Yahoo! Publisher network.

• Increase your revenue by monetizing the content of your web site.
• Satisfy your users by offering them ad content related to their interests.
• Leverage our knowledge of how best to optimize your contextual advertising.
• Get paid quickly via a convenient PayPal payment option and earn a return on the money in your PayPal account by depositing your funds in PayPal’s Money Market Reserve Fund.

eXelate Targeting eXchange
By integrating a simple tag on your website, you connect your visitors with leading ad networks who wish to deliver more targeted ads to them when they leave you. You don’t need to use any of your ad inventory to generate a totally new revenue stream. And, since we never collect personally identifiable information, or build profiles, your visitor relationship is assured to remain privacy-friendly.

Adify
You have full editorial control over the entire process. More revenue, none of the usual compromises.

• Set prices for every ad space and redirect unsold inventory
• Review and approve every ad
• Support CPM, CPC, and Sponsorship pricing

Blog Ads
Blogads.com is a network of influential bloggers who collaborate to promote and sell blog advertising.

Blog Monetization

Before you decide to monetize your blog, you will want to evaluate the options available and choose one that blends with your target audience, blog focus and overall theme. In truth, not every blog is easily monetized especially if your audience isn’t fond of commercialized websites, which is what yours will be once you tag in a few modules and integrate a handful of sponsor ads.

If you are sure you want to go this route however, there are many opportunities available to you if you are interested in being paid to blog, as well as additional options as far as making money with the advertising space available on your blog. You can feature sponsors, JV partners, affiliate products through marketplaces like ClickBank or can integrate Google Adsense throughout your navigation system, such as by featuring it in the side bar area of your blog.

In reality, you truly can make a decent income with your blog, as many bloggers are reporting $100 per day Adsense earnings, and even more with affiliate based campaigns. To join the ranks of pro bloggers, however, you need to be willing to roll up your sleeves and dig into the daily grind of creating relevant content, link bait, interesting posts as well as improving on your existing skill set to ensure your blog is taking advantage of the many tools and utilites to increase user interaction and return visits.

Some of these elements include:

• RSS Newsletter/Syndication
• List Building (with autoresponders)
• Trackbacks, Pings, Feed Aggregators
• Blog Carnivals and community participation
• Utilizing SEO plugins to help your blog rank
• Social bookmarketing, contextual advertising

And more..

While you don’t have to be a techy, or a professional web developer to make money with blogs, you should know the basics of blogging including your blog structure and the different tools and resources that will make your blog monetizing even easier.

Other elements could include podcasting, creating videos for display on your blog (or pulling videos from YouTube with blog based video plugins), or you could create your own weekly newsletter that offers tips and resources based on your blogs content. The more interactive you can make your blog, the more likely people will return.

Part of the reason why many bloggers fail when trying to make money blogging is by simply not understanding the various elements that successful bloggers focus on every single day. You need to make a significant effort to learn as much as you can about basic (and advanced) blogging so that you are easily able to take your blog to a whole new level.

Here are a few resources to help you get started:

Contextual Advertising:

Google Adsense

Chitika

Clicksor

AdSonar

Yahoo Publisher Network

Adbrite Marketing

Text Link Ads:
http://www.text-link-ads.com