Start a Blog for Profit

Starting a blog for profit is a rewarding activity in the long run.  I have built several blogs over the years, the one currently run is Survival Broadcast.  Starting a blog is easy, getting quality traffic, repeat visitors, and making a living at it is the tough part.

I recommend using Wordpress for your blogging needs.  It is great for beginners and experts.  Wordpress offers freely hosted blogs but you need a unique URL, or web address, so I suggest you host your own blog.  With new web tools, this is super easy to do, even for a beginner.

·         Go to a hosting company like godaddy.com (many companies offer hosting, I just find Go daddy to be affordable, reliable, and very easy to install Wordpress so I recommend it.  Feel free to shop around.)

·         Sign up for a hosting account, they range from $4 a month to over $20 a month.  I currently use the $6.99 a month hosting plan on Go Daddy.

·         Once your account is set up, you will want to buy your domain name for that account.  Pick a solid name for your blog, one without dashes or weird characters.  I chose survivalbroadcast.com because it is simple and easy to remember and it easily conveys what they blog is about: survivalism.

·         Now, with many top rated web hosts you will be able to install a Wordpress blog on your hosting account with a simple click of the button.  I know that bluehost.com, dreamhost.com, godaddy.com, and laughingsquid.us all have “one click installation” of Wordpress.  This is just as easy as it sounds.  Find the Apps, Add-Ons, or whatever your host company calls it and find the Wordpress install.  Then just click the install button.

Now your host will normally take a few hours to get this set up.  Once it is up and running you can go to: http://www.YOURSITENAME.com/wp-admin and you can sign into your Wordpress account and start blogging.  You can pick templates or make your own, etc. 

Now that you have a blog set up, you need content, and lots of it.  Spend a few weeks writing quality posts every day, really build up the substance to your site.  Don’t worry about visitors yet, you will get a few but not many right now.  Just work on the layout of your blog and the content right now.  Add pictures to your posts and informative links.  Make the articles something that you would want to read.

You have a blog with some quality content and you are continuing to add content regularly.  Now you can go hunt for visitors and build a community.  This is a slow process, it is not fast and a blog is very rarely a “make money fast” idea.  It takes time; sometimes it can take over a year to start making any money at all.  Build social media pages for your blog.  Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (not as popular, but it’s free), You Tube, etc.  Build these pages and post articles, pictures, stories, video, everything.  Go to other pages that talk about similar things and friend request those people.  You really need to work hard and spend some time building your friend and follower base on social media.   You can also guest post on other blogs of similar content and invite guest bloggers to post a special article on your blog as well.  Participate in other forums and include a link to your blog in your signature.  You have to post quality things in other forums though or people will pass you up as an advertisement.  You can also trade links with other blogs and websites that share similar interests.  It can be as easy as sending them an email asking to trade links.

You can also post on places like answers.com, about.com, hubpages.com and others.  These are normally informative articles where you talk about your expert subject and you can point people toward your blog for more information.  I caution against posting too much on these websites though, why spend too much time writing for these sites when you can write for your own site? 

Now you are slowly but surely growing your reader base, it’s time to start interacting with your readers.  Open up your blog to readers comments and questions.  When people are commenting on a blog post, jump in and interact with them, they will appreciate the attention you give to them.  It shows that you care that they are a part of your community.  You can also post polls, surveys, and other things that help make your blog interactive.

Once you have a solid base of users, you can start to add a money making aspect to your blog.  You can sell advertising directly if you are good at sales and have a large base of readers.  The majority of us use Google Adwords, Amazon affiliates, and other affiliate programs.  I am currently using Google Adwords pretty much exclusively, although I’ll be adding Amazon to my blog in the near future.  The key to good results with this type of advertising is placement.  You don’t want to annoy your readers but if you just place ads at the bottom of the page you will not get great results.  Sometimes, with a lengthy post, I will break it up with a thin banner ad.  This is not super intrusive since I am only using one ad and not many, but it also puts the product in front of the reader.  Also, you can incorporate ads in your article much the same way you do a picture.  You can see in this Hubpages article that the article “wraps” around the ads that are posted.  These ads are often helpful to the reader so you will click on one after reading the article to further grow your knowledge.  This helps you and it makes me a little money, it’s good for everyone if your ads are not intrusive and they offer quality.

Know this: no matter how good your ad placement is, you will not make any money at all without a solid, large base of visitors.  You have to continue to post quality content that people want to read or your stats will go down.  You can have ads in your content and people won’t mind as long as the articles are good and not full of filler.

Feel free to use the comments section below to ask any follow up questions and I will be happy to share any information that I can with you about my experiences owning, building, and selling blogs and websites.