Step 2, How Does a Blog Make Money?

This post, "Step 2, How does a blog make money?" answers the questions:

How does a blog make money? Do all blogs make money? What is the difference between a blog that makes money and one that doesn't? What are all the factors that, when added together, create a blog that makes money? What is the one KEY that's most important to a blog's success?


So, "How does a blog make money?"

In short, a blog makes money when a visitor to the blog clicks on an ad or performs some other action that an advertiser has decided to pay the blog owner for.


As a blog owner you might make money when:

• a visitor clicks an ad on your site
• a visitor fills in their email address that is sent to an advertiser
• a visitor clicks on an ad on your site, then goes to another site - "Amazon" for instance, and orders a book for which you receive about 10% commission.
• an advertiser - like "Pepsi" decides that it makes good sense to pay you $500 usd per month to show their Pepsi banner on your site.
• another site comes to respect your site as a leader in whatever area you're blogging about. They offer you $100 to review their site and post the review on your blog.
• a visitor orders one of your clever "I just saw Vern's neighbor spit on his house t-shirts" that you have for sale. (see the video here, right click and choose "save target as" and put on your desktop to view later).
• a company like Fastclick pays you for some advertising space on your site so that they can show a variety of companies' banners in that ad space. You are paid per thousand impressions.

Do all blogs make money doing these things?
Uhm, No.

Few successful sites do all those things mentioned. It wouldn't be a good idea to plaster your site with ads like a 3rd grader's art collage to make money. You've definitely seen those sites about making money online - they are jam-packed with ads that detract seriously from the site. If I happen to land at one of those sites I'll just close the window. It's TOO MUCH.

The ads are too overwhelming and cry obnoxiously for my attention as I'm trying to find something worthwhile to read to make me smarter or happier. On some sites I get dumber as a result of all the ads vying for my eyeballs.

Remember:

• A blog's purpose is to provide information - not ads.
• Visitors to your site want to read information that makes them smarter or happier.
• One or well placed ad sections on your blog is not a big deal, an ad may ADD something to your site. A visitor may click away and become smarter as a result of following the ad. That is the way advertising SHOULD be. The ads offer a bonus - something that helps the visitor to your blog become smarter or happier.
• Ads are a supplement to a blog, not the focus.

Bloggers that make a LOT of money have something in common.
They...

Apply smart and sustained effort to create success.


If I can blog everyday, YOU can blog everyday.

Ask me how good I've been in the past about continuing something I started.
Ask my family. They are worn out over it.
No matter that I have attention deficit disorder, there is just so much flipping around even a mom will tolerate!

I realized though, I needed to take control quickly and work on doing something consistently or my life won't change. I found that in blogging. It's an easy way to discipline one's self and condition yourself to doing something EVERY single day without fail.

That something could be as short as a 40 minute 3 paragraph blog post about the best blog sites in the world that are covering the same topic as your site.

You've GOTTA have at least an hour daily to blog. Or, if you don't have an hour everyday you need to be disciplined enough to write a few blog posts on a day you do have time and save them for days you only have enough time to login and upload a post for that day.

Blogging is SO EASY compared to many things you could be doing.

Today you could choose between learning a lot about the stock market and investing in penny stocks, or, you could invest your time in learning about how to blog and make money.

I know a couple of guys that spend on AVERAGE about 14 hours per day watching stocks go up and down on their computers and analyzing companies' performance and annual reports to make money. I also know people that blog for an AVERAGE of one hour per day everyday to make money.

Both groups of people are successful (making more than $50,000 per year).


Who do you think is living a smarter life? A more rewarding one?

When you are starting out blogging there is a good chance that you will only be working 4-8 hours per day if you choose to do it full-time.

Once the learning curve is over though, and you're working 1-4 hours per day blogging you'll have so much time to yourself you'll think it's Christmas everyday.

But wait, THERE IS A BONUS!

After you've learned all about blogging from this site you'll have an ENTIRE TEAM of the smartest people in the world ready to help you make money with your blog... no, I don't mean me and my girlfriend, I mean the GOOGLE MACHINE!

GOOGLE has taken the advertising world by the nutticles and is churning out cash for a lot of people that own blogs and other websites. It's their whole mission - make everyone money. Keep everyone rolling in cash. Keep pulling rabbits out of the hat by finding innovative ways to monetize blogs and websites so the owners and advertising companies, AND their customers, AND GOOGLE are happy.

It's a 4-way "Happy".

Recently GOOGLE has added some MORE useful and totally free tools to their aresenal of ways to make you money. MUCH more about that in later posts.


What is the difference between a blog that makes money and one that doesn't?

• Effort of the blogger (blog owner).
• Focus of the site (topic)

Focus of the site is very important. You can choose to blog about red colored cotton thread and make a few pennies a month.

or

You can choose to blog about traveling deals in Hawaii.

One of these is a good topic to focus on to make money, the other is not. Focus is VERY important.


What are all the factors that contribute to a blog making money and becoming successful?

Well designed blog (template, colors, whitespace, formatting)
+ well-chosen blog topic (focus)
+ well-chosen title of blog
+ well chosen titles of posts and focus of each post
+ ads or other monetization strategy that matches visitors (traffic)
+ site optimized for Google and other search engines
+ TRAFFIC
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= MONEY for you and your loved ones!


That's it.




BlogSimply is all about these factors, plus a couple more (keeping visitors smiling and smart, and some advanced topics to be revealed later)


If there is one essential ingredient to a successful blog - it's traffic. If you dont have traffic you have nothing. You have a blog that takes away 6 to 60 hours out of your week and doesn't make you enough for a pizza.

Traffic comes with time and it comes with a lot of effort. Besides writing your post everyday you should be doing something to bring more traffic to your site everyday. It is not difficult, but again, it takes continual effort.

Traffic is the key to making money with your site. You can make money with 1000 visitors per month or you can make money with 6 million visitors per month. Guess which one is better?



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So to review... your blog will make money when a visitor performs some action on your site that an advertiser has offered to pay you for. That "action" can be a click, a page-view, filling out a form, ordering a product, or something else. You may even get paid just to show ads on your site every month.

There are many factors that combine to create a blog that makes money. Of those factors, the two most important are a continued effort by you the blogger to post daily and post something of value that your visitors either get smarter for having read, or get happier for having read. The other factor, and probably the greatest factor to the success (money-generating capability) of your blog is T-R-A-F-F-I-C! Without traffic you have nothing - you have a personal blog you can tell your family about.


Ok, that was Step 2 - How does a blog make money?

Go to Step 3 only after you've fully understood Step 2.


Prior post, Step 1, What is a Blog?

Next post Step 3: What Skills and Qualities do I need to Blog?

[ Note: If you have any questions so far, just click the "POST A COMMENT" link below and write me a question. I answer ALL COMMENTS everyday on every blog... Vern ]