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.

Ways to Make Money Online

There are literally hundreds of ways to make money online, perhaps thousands.  If you want to have the best chance of being successful, you need to choose the method that suits your talents and desires.  If you hate writing, you’re probably not going to be the best blogger.  If you aren’t the least bit artistic, you may have a very tough time being a website designer.

We’re going to look at several of the most popular ways to make money online.  You’ll learn a little about each one, the basics of getting started, and who might be best suited for each method.

Niche Blogging

Blogging is a great way to make money.  You’re probably not going to make much money blogging about your kids or your dog.  You have to blog about something many people actually want to read about.  This is called “niche blogging”.

You might choose to blog about wine tasting, model cars, coaching Little League Baseball, restoring classic cars, or just about anything else you’re interested in.  In fact, you don’t even have to be interested in a topic as long as you believe you can write enough good material about it and you believe there is enough interest in it.

I would advise using WordPress on your own hosting with your own domain.  There are free blogs that you can use, but these can be deleted at any time by an admin from their site.  You don’t want to lose all of your hard work, so you should stick to your own domain if possible.

Blogging is great for people who have the patience and dedication to update the blog daily, or at minimum once per week.  It requires a certain level of writing skill, but you certainly don’t have to be perfect.  As long as you can write well enough for people to understand you and you know how to write in a way that is fun or interesting, you’ll do fine.

Blogging isn’t a good idea if you don’t like to stick to one thing very long or you get bored easily.  If you hate writing it’s also probably not for you.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing can be done in many ways, from running an email list, to blogging, to creating niche content websites and more.  Basically, you promote other peoples’ products for commission.

Because there are so many ways to do this, it can be suited to almost anyone.  You can outsource the writing if you want, and even the creation of websites.  There are millions of products out there to promote, so you can choose something you really enjoy or something that you feel will make you the most money.

Freelance Writing

If you really enjoy writing but would rather not run your own sites, you can write for others.  Freelance writing can pay quite well, especially if you can write rather quickly.

You do need to have very good spelling and grammar skills if you want to write for others at a good price.  If you’re willing to work very cheaply, you will be able to get work even if your writing skills are fairly poor, but only those with excellent skills are paid well.

You need to be sure you can stick to deadlines and work well under pressure.  If you continually miss deadlines you won’t have a lot of repeat customers and you could ruin your reputation.

Graphics or Website Design

If you’re good at making graphics or websites, you could do this on a freelance basis.  Design pays fairly well, and there is never a shortage of work for talented designers who are reliable.

As with freelance writing, you must be able to meet deadlines consistently.  By working quickly and producing quality work by the time you say you will, you will build up a client list that will buy from you over and over.

Article Marketing

If you don’t have any money to invest to get started, you can try article marketing.  Sites called article directories will let you submit articles to them and they will place the articles on their site.  In exchange, you get to have a couple of links in your “bio box” or “resource box” at the end of the article.

Many article directories will let you place an affiliate link here.  Those that won’t will usually let you link to a free web page or blog like Blogger.com, Squidoo.com, or Hubpages.com.  You can write and submit articles and promote affiliate products, and it won’t cost you anything to get started.

Many people use this as a springboard for further pursuits.  You can start with article marketing, and once you have built some money up with it you can invest some of that money into other moneymaking methods.

Since article marketing requires a lot of writing, you should enjoy and be good at it.  Also, you need to be persistent at writing.  Article marketing requires you to write a lot of articles to make good money.

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