Make Money Blogging

To make money blogging is the goal for many bloggers but the chances are that most fail to make any significant money since it's not their focus. The blogs that make the most money have high volumes of targeted visitor traffic.

To get the visitor traffic, you can engage in social networking or SEO. SEO is most likely to bring you the targeted traffic since your keywords will be what people have searched for.

The best topics to blog about are those related to helping people make buying decisions such as product reviews, comparison guides, or advice on what to look out for when deciding to buy something.

Then you can monetize the blog posts with links to places such as Amazon, where the product may be purchased through your affiliate link.

There are many different affiliate programs available featuring all kinds of products. Some popular programs are ClickBank, Amazon, Commission Junction, Market Health, and Azoogle Ads. In general you will choose banner-style Ads or text links to insert in the post content or in place-holders in your theme template.

To improve conversions, you want Ads that are well matched to the topic of your blog post and position these Ads above the fold and in the flow of the post content.

For Ads that are displayed site-wide it's a good idea to rotate them in the side-bar so that they are always close to where the reader is looking on the page, and they rotate so as to avoid the reader mentally ignoring the Ad (banner blindness).

As well as review-style posts, you may prefer to write regular posts on your passion for a particular subject to grow a fan base and get repeat and growing visitor traffic. With enough traffic, you could then sell advertising slots in your sidebar, which many popular bloggers do to make monthly income.

Another passive way to make money blogging is to insert Adsense into the mix, where contextual Ads are served and you get paid per click. The best way to set these Ads up is to have a white background, no border, and blue link text. This blends the Ads into your blog and the links may then appear as natural navigation links to related content for the visitor.

When embedding affiliate links, you can use URL shortening services to mask the often long, ugly affiliate link or leave it as is for say Amazon, where it may reassure you visitor that they will go to a reputable destination.

Make these links no-follow so as not to leak page rank, and help with SEO. Also, ensure that any re-directs are 301. This is a technical term to tell search engines that the location of the URL has permanently moved to the final destination site.

For legal compliance, always familiarize yourself with the rules of each affiliate program, and add disclosure statements to a legal page on your blog. This helps to satisfy the requirements of the FTC for US-based affiliates.

So, hopefully this helps you make money blogging.