Blogging for a second income - does anyone else here do this?

competitionscafe

scoodies wrote: »

Hi There!

I set up my own blog back in March but nobody has visited

I'm not sure how I go about advertising it or how to get people to check my site out??! :rolleyes:

Scoodies xx

Update it regularly and make sure that the title and url of your posts contain keywords that people are actually searching for (use the Google keywords tool to check). It can take a while to get indexed by search engines but once you do they like blogs which are regularly updated with fresh content.

Get backlinks.

Make useful and interesting comments on other related blogs and include a link back to your blog.

If you are using Wordpress install the 'all in one seo' plug in.

Read Googles guide to the basics of seo:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Here are some more tips:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/13/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-the-advice-of-a-12-year-old/

northerner999

I'm a journalist who's about to go self-employed and have found this interesting, I do work with a couple of website providers where I take a cut of their ad reveune. Writing on football (I specialise in sport), and make a couple of grand a year - though this is after doing these sites for a decade alongside full-time work.

I'm going self-employed in the summer, with these sites as a key part of my income, can anyone reccomend guide prices for website design? I'm looking to add a third website to the two I edit but don't have the design skills if the company I currently partner with is not keen on the idea. I'm putting together proposals now (and playing around with an old version of Dreamweaver to show what I'm looking for), but any guide prices would be welcome. I need some kind of content management system to add news and some easy way of adding football results/fixtures into a database which will also display league tables.

pinkpong

i am not clever enough to set up any blogg, but can you tell me how do you actually earn any money from a blogg?

faevilangel

pinkpong wrote: »

i am not clever enough to set up any blogg, but can you tell me how do you actually earn any money from a blogg?

go to blogger.com and set one up, go to the settings and go to the monetise tab

then set up an adsense account, then choose where you would like to put the adverts

when someone clicks on the ads, you get a percentage of the revenue

you can also include your own affiliate code from any shopping site like amazon or advertising systems like tradedoubler and comission junction

competitionscafe

pinkpong wrote: »

i am not clever enough to set up any blog, but can you tell me how do you actually earn any money from a blog?

Sure you are clever enough - you already passed the test.

If you can post messages on this forum, you can set up a blog and post blog messages using blogger - it's exactly the same as posting messages here - so as long as you can type in a box and click a button you can blog.

There is a free series of tutorial videos on this website:
http://www.butterscotch.com/tutorial/Starting-A-Blog

As for earning money - as faevilangel said, with blogger you just click a 'monetize' button and then register for an adwords account and ads will display. Probably best to wait until you have some content first though as you are more likely to get approved. When visitors click on your ads you get paid. Never ever click on your own ads or encourage anyone else to do so as you risk getting banned by adsense for click fraud. Here's how adsense works: http://www.google.com/services/adsense_tour/index.html

Once you have a decent amount of visitors you can also add links to relevant affiliate programs which earn you a commission when someone clicks on your referral link and goes on to make a purchase. Another option if / when you have a lot of visitors is to sell advertising space on your site.

scoodies

competitionscafe wrote: »

Update it regularly and make sure that the title and url of your posts contain keywords that people are actually searching for (use the Google keywords tool to check). It can take a while to get indexed by search engines but once you do they like blogs which are regularly updated with fresh content.

Get backlinks.

Make useful and interesting comments on other related blogs and include a link back to your blog.

If you are using Wordpress install the 'all in one seo' plug in.

Read Googles guide to the basics of seo:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf

Here are some more tips:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/02/13/how-to-drive-traffic-to-your-blog-the-advice-of-a-12-year-old/

Hi there, thanks for the info

Just wanted to ask, how do I find other related blogs? Do I just search for them? And how do I include a link back to my blog?

Scoodies xx

PasturesNew

I have several blogs I am building up and I earn some money from them - but not as much as I do from an actual website. Odd comparison.

I don't tend to get round to the promotion bit because the blogging takes so much time.

I'm always finding new tools to use/install, or new stuff to investigate.... and I never like the look of it ... I have tried over 40 themes so far!

My blogs all circumnavigate a core concept... and now in my head I know how to bring them all together. But it's that design element that holds me up really.

I know how they will connect and what the message/focus for each is, but somehow I have to bring them all together with one design. Could be at it until Xmas I guess.

PasturesNew

One of my blogs purely contains all my "finds" - all the stuff I've found along the way that I think is useful, essential ... so rather than cracking on with my actual blogs, I find myself blogging to myself to document all the bits and pieces. I also use that space to experiment a bit.

I am trying to Google Ad Manager to manage the space ... but I do any tweaks in Notepad so it was taking me about 1.5 hours per ad block to locate the right part of the div to insert the google code. So that's half done and half on the back burner.

My tips for friends for blogging would be:
- use wordpress.org (you HAVE to have your own software/hosting). Although blogger allows you to place adverts you have less control. Also, Wordpress has a bigger community - which means more plugins to do what you want
- install all-in-one-sea plugin
- install wp-backup plugin - and set it to email you a daily backup of your whole site. I send this to my gmail email address so wherever I am if it ever falls over I can get hold of the backup online (I don't have to be at home, at my PC).

I probably use 6-20 plugins per domain I have. I have about 30 domains "in the queue" to do something with.

Imani

I have a blog, in fact I have 3 blogs on blogger. 2 of which I know I get regular readers. not thousands yet but my blog gets read.

I have bought the domain names for 2 blogs but always fail at changing the blog url that confuses me.

I will check out problogger and can the thread starter pm your blog link

MagicMummy_2

I have set up a blog on blogger and I just wanted to know if anyone had any ideas on how to find other blog writers to swap links or where I can find other similiar blogs to comment on and leave my details.
Basically I need to get the word out there that my blog exists,

Its sort of linked to what I learn on MSE and other smiliar sites as its got (or will have) loads of ideas on how to save money and make extra money.... Kind of like a diary of a money saver. :beer:

Any help would be brilliant