How to Make Money Blogging

How you can make money and be successful blogging - the quickest way.
(part one of 2 Killer Articles)
Blogging is perhaps the most widespread activity on the internet and one of the best ways to make money online possible without having to rely on others;
This however, does not mean that simply by creating a blog, that you are going to have any success. There are millions of blogs and bloggers on the www making blogging an extremely competitive method for making money online. However, if you follow these guidelines which i am goiing to explain to you, you will stand a more than decent chance of at least making some half decent pocket money;

Firstly, one of the most important factors is to not write about things you know nothing about, or things which are already dominated by other blogs which have established themselves to the extent that you will never be able to catch up with them.
Secondly, you should make sure that the posts you make are easy to read, and have lost of useful information for the interested party who is reading your blog.
Thirdly, you should keep most posts relatively short and to the point; make sure the title of your blogpost is related to the content of your post, and has a title which explains what the post is really about. You will not get repeat visits from your readers if you title a post let's say "5 ways to make your cactus grow fast" and then try to sell them some cactus seeds on the premise that the seeds you are selling will grow fast. You should give the reader really useful and genuine tips which will leave the reader satisfied and wishing to return to learn more from your useful and informative blog.
Don't forget to give people the odd freebie or goodies which will make your blog all the more atractive - for example if you post videoclips of movie trailers then you can include free wallpapers for them to download as a screensaver etc.
Apart from the short concisive and informative posts you can intersperse them with the occasional "Killer Post"
What is a Killer Post? you may find yourself asking; A killer post is a longer and extremely informative post which provides your readers with a hive of really useful info - you dont need to post this kind of post every time, that would make the blog too hard for some people to chew on. However such posts are essential in increasing the value of your blog content and will make readers recommend your blog to friends and family. To see and understand more about what a killer post entails you can click on the category called "Killer Posts" on the navigation menu to see all posts i have made which could be considered to belong to this type of post category.
A Killer Post (or sometimes refered to as a Killer Article) is a post which has immense value to your readers. The post should evoke a reaction in your reader which incites them to bookmark your article or even post it to their favourite social bookmarking site or Social network, such as facebook, Twitter, Magnolia, Digg and the like.
Even though most killer posts are longer ones, this is not necessarily always the case; What is important is the value of the information give, For example, if you have a blog about home finance, and know a way for people to save money on their tax returns, and you then explain how to acheive this goal in two paragraphs, the post is still most definitely a Killer Post, and will without doubt bring you a faithful readership, return visits and even more traffic due to the friends they send the link to your blog to because of the immense value of your post.
This will increase the amount of backlinks to your blog, as well as solidify your blog as a trusted authority on your chosen blog topic. If you think about this it is pure common sense that this kind of blogging is the kind which worls most efficiently.
here are some good examples of Killer Posts which i have found and selected for you to examine, based on different subjects;
Seven reasons babies cry and how to soothe them
Why we laugh when tickled
Five Easy ways to Transform your Life
5 Easy Ways to Optimize your Website for Bing
How to Pay Zero Income Taxes


Normal Posts;
Apart from Killer Posts, it is of great importance to have the majority of your postings being normal shorter posts. These normal posts will be responsible for helping you to develop a group community around your blog which your readers will be able to feel at home with and identify themselves as a member. This is how you communicate with your members and reach out to them, engaging them to participate in your thoughts ideas and opinions with their comments.


Blog Optimisation;
The Headline, or Title of your blog post, is of as much importance as the content in many respects. Why is this? The answer is simple and twofold;
Because the first words read in search results will be the title of the post, which should be informative and in context with the content, and have an angle which catches both the eye and interest of the reader.
Because if and when a reader bookmarks your post to a social bookmarking site or blog directory such as digg, technorati or the like, if the title of your post is not interesting and eyecatching enough, then whoever sees the link to your blog on that site, will most probably not feel like clicking on it, and overlook your post.
It is of great importance to try and think how the person searching for info on the topic you are posting in thinks, and what words they would use to search. For this reason you should do some searches using different search phrases to see what comes up and which phrases are the most commonly used (if you do a search in google for example, and have the browser set to fill in search queries for you as you type, then you will see how many thousands or millions of searches are made for each term as you search).
Doing this will assist you in choosing how you title your blogpost before you make it.
To assist you in this you could try using the
Google Adwords Keyword search tool, which will help you to find related search phrases when you type in any keyword. Once you enter a certain keyword or search term the tool will give you up to one hundred and fifty related search terms.
This should give you ideas about how to title your post.
heres a tip though; Supposing you use the tool to tstresults for the phrase "10 ways to lose weight efficiently" and see the results that the words "Lose weight efficiently" only has 100 daily world searches, but that the words "quick weight loss" has 100 searches daily, then yo would be better entitling your post something like "10 factors for Quick weight loss" or "Quick Weight loss tips" - in addition if you see that both "quick weight loss" and "easy weight loss" are getting many searches worldwide each day then perhaps it would be better to title your post "10 quick and easy weight loss tips" - there are many possible variations and you will have to develop your own feel for this too, as i cannot tell you the answers to all of the permutations, they are too many. Experiment and learn from your experiences.. after all experience is what is going to make you a real pro blogger in the end, and my tips are designed to get you started on the right track, not to solve all your problems and do all the work for you.
Self Hosted or free Blog?
Many experts will tell you that it is better to own your own hosted domain if you really wish to go for top ranking success with your blog. This is of course in general the case, but not always. the main advantage of owning your own domain is that if yo have a free blog such as blogger or wordpress, and break one of their policies, you might get your blog deleted, losing all your hard work for nothing. But if you are careful to stay withiin their terms of service, i see no reason why this should happen, and i can tell you that there are many a free blog service which has proved sufficient platform for many a blogger to attain top search results for some of the most wanted search terms and keywords around.
Lets take the keywords"make money online" for example..
makemoneyforbeginners.blogspot.com is a blogger hosted blog which gets on the top search results in google search for that search term ! do a search and see for yourself!

Blogger;
Blogger is a fine option for making money onine, especially when you consider the fact that it is a goe domain and that it is possible to incorporate google adsense with your blog using widgets from within the blogger admin interface without having to go to adsense control panel at all. Inserting and optimizing ads is as easy as pie using this option. Other portals such as wordpress do not allow you to insert afilliate links or ads which will restrain your attempts at making money online using blogging as your method of preference.

Code optimisation;
If you notice, i have made some phrases in this post to be bold text. This is because the keywords which i wish to have more "keyword weight" in the search engine results, will be more easily given higher importance factor through use of bold or italic text than if i left them as plain text.
Use bols text to increase the weight of your chosen keywords when you use them in the content of your post. You can also underline text for the same purpose if you like.

Increasing traffic;

Commenting on other important blogs;
Dont forget to visit other related blogs and comment using open id, name and your url or even your google account id or blogger id. When you make a decent and iteresting, or even controversial comment which will evoke interest in you because of your comment, this will sometimes cause people to click on your avatar and visit your site.
This is an extra way to get backlinks and win readership, as well as pleasing other blog owners by adding to the social content on their blogs, which always make a blog come to life more and attract more reader reactions and interactiveness to their blogs. It is a win win situation but only if you comment in an interesting and valid way. Dont just write "thanks mate" and enter your url, as this wont get your comment approved.

reciprocal links;
Seek out other decent blogs which are topic related to yours and link to them from your blog, then contact the respective blog authors and tell them about it - start by saying that you like their blog and gave them a link. The you could mention that you would be pleased if they also gave you a link to yours, but dont push it just be polite. This way you will come across in a more likeable manner and have more chance that they will be pleased with you. This is obviously going to make them most probably wish to return the favour. Major search engines will increase your pagerank if you have incoming links from related blogs.


I sincerely hope that the information in this post serves to help you to increase reader interest and visitor count in your blogging projects, and that you have found the information given to be of use to you.