Blogging can be a lot of fun or it can be a lot of work. Usually, it is a little bit of both. But the main reason most people get into blogging is to make money at home by sharing their knowledge and experiences with the world.
The thought of finding a niche topic that you are passionate about or at least somewhat interested in and have some knowledge about, then finding a way to earn money blogging about it can be a very intriguing idea. But you need to remember that consistently writing blog posts, building traffic, gaining readership, and ultimately making money from it takes a lot of work.
So, what do you need to do in order to profit from your blog? There are many things that need to be done at one time or another and some more often than others, but here are three things that should be done on a regular basis from the start…
1) Write Awesome Content
Writing great content will help you get readers and keep them coming back for more. Great content gets shared and linked to, crappy content doesn’t. One of the best ways to grow traffic to your blog is through great content on a consistent basis.
2) Build Your Email List
Many bloggers do not understand how important it is to collect email addresses from their visitors to build their email list of opt-in subscribers. Using an auto-responder service such as Aweber is a great way to start building your email list. You put an opt-in form on your blog, offer something of value to entice people to subscribe, send out a periodic newsletter, and watch your list grow. Then, from time to time you can send them resources and useful products that you are an affiliate of and make money from the sales.
3) Market like a Madman
If you want to make money blogging then people need to find your blog. Building traffic and readership is extremely important and to do that you need to market your blog. This can be done many different ways (and should be) but it basically falls under two general steps…
* Making your blog SEO friendly.
* Marketing your blog to potential readers/subscribers.
These two things go hand-in-hand. For example, if you are marketing to individuals on a forum or in an article with a link to your blog then search engines are also going to pick up on it.
Making your site SEO friendly is very important because it allows more individual readers to find your blog by searching on search engines for specific keywords and information within your niche. The main way to SEO your blog and build high rankings on the search engines is to get backlinks. There are tons of ways to do this and some of the more popular ways are through article marketing, guest blogging, blog commenting, directories, forums, web 2.0 sites, social media, video marketing, press releases, and several others.
Marketing to potential blog readers is mainly done through social media websites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and many others. It is also done through engaging in conversations with other bloggers in your niche via comments on their blog posts and helping each other on forums. Your goal here is more to build relationships with people so they get to know and trust you and want to become a subscriber to your blog and purchase things you recommend.
Once these three simple steps are in place and part of your regular routine, you can expect to start profiting from your blogging efforts sooner, rather than later.