So you want to make money online?

I want to make money with my blog.

Blogs, electronic journals, e-zines, e-books, online versions of paper magazines, the options are endless. How can you find the blog that you would like to read? That seems like a stupid question to ask, the stereotypical answer would be: “Google it”. Yeah right. Try it, and when you have pulled every hair on your head, let me know. Search engine categorize blogs by keywords, and there are exponentially, as many ways to find your blog, as there are words in whichever language(s) you are currently using.

The next problem that you will find, is that people tend to start a blog entry, and suddenly, a friend comments on the blog, but instead of adding content, they start a non-related conversation about the immortality of crabs or some nonsensical topic like last night’s dance. Don’t take me wrong, that is totally ok. But it does not serve the purpose if you are limited in time and want an expedite way of research.

The problem is that blogers are human beings, they get bored, they get busy, they become frustrated, and that lends itself to inconsistency. Inconsistency breeds the mess that we find now on the Internet.

The thing is, that this is supposed to be a blog about making money, business opportunities, and social media. So why did I started this post in such a convoluted way? You guessed it, here is the answer: you can make money with a blog if you follow a few very basic rules. Many people have done it. It does not take a rocket scientist. I read about a teenage girl that started designing “wallpaper” for her MySpace account, and gave it away for free on her blog. Suddenly, her popularity skyrocketed (went viral) and at seventeen, someone offered her over $1,000,000.00 for her blog. Yes, that is over one million dollars. She declined, the upped the offer, and the rest is history. John Chow, started a ranting blog, and now he receive tens of thousands of hits (visitors) a week. He makes a killing on advertisements.

How does that benefit you? Simple, start a blog; the experience alone, even if you make no money of the back, is worthy. You will get used to the pace, posting, replying to comments, and placing ads on your blog. You can start a blog for free, get an Adsense account (from Google) and start making modest amounts of money. But if you really want to make money, you need traffic; you need to drive visitors to your blog. Your writing needs to be interesting; your blog should have good content, and need to be updated often to keep people visiting you often.

Tell me again why I should start a blog? Here it goes again: a blog is a diary that others read, get interested on, comment on your postings, and gives you the opportunity to reply to those postings, thus establishing a relationship.

Follow me now... You suddenly get many friends to follow your writings, some will agree with you and some will not, no surprise there, but if you are honest, treat everybody with dignity, they will come back. You have managed to establish a following. You are establishing yourself as an authority.

Keep up now, I’m going fast here… what is marketing? Marketing is the art or science of advertising a product or service so people will purchase it. The marketer should be credible and savvy enough to advertise a product so the viewers, readers, friends, etc. accept his or her word for it, and want to purchase such product or service. But how can you advertise if you have no credibility? And how can you create or develop credibility if people don’t know you? Enter the BLOG… Got it?

Got it. Get your name out there, for the right reasons. Be serious about it. Research your postings before publishing. Treat others with a modicum of respect. Advertise your blog to your Social Media friends; hopefully you will have more than ten. Have your friends recommend your postings to their friends. Have them Digg, or Stumbelupon, or bookmark your articles. Soon enough, not overnight though, your name will be on the search engines. And your blog will have a good following; making you an authority. Oh, remember the adsense and other advertising that you started doing on your blog? With some luck, you will be bringing some revenue as your visitors click on your advertisements.

So, lets summarize:

a. Create a blog.
b. Add fairly good quality articles or postings; make sure that you research the topic.
c. Place some advertisements on it.
d. Tell your friends and ask them to ask your friends to visit your blog, if it is good, some will continue visiting and reading it.

Tell me what you think… leave your comments below.