How to Make Money Blogging

Turn your hobby into a profitable home business

You might think of professional blogging as a dream job only intended for a lucky few; but it’s easier than it looks to grow and monetize a modest personal or hobby blog into a successful small business. There are already plenty of blog posts explaining AdSense, Affiliate Marketing, etc., so we’ll focus on getting your blog noticed and read, so that any monetization strategy can be profitable.

1. Pick your niche

Ideally, you want your blog to have a theme: some specific niche that isn’t already filled by big names. If you’re trying to create a general humor blog, for instance, you’ll have to compete for ranking with giants like Cracked and College Humor, and at best, your blog will be doomed to wander page 7 or 8 on Google for all eternity; but if you can narrow it down to some niche topic, you’ve got a good shot at making the first page and getting clicks.

Before you commit to any theme, take a look at Google rankings for words related to your topic. First, you want to make sure that your topic is commonly searched—if hardly anyone is Googling your topic, it’ll be tougher to drum up traffic. Second, take a look at your competition on page 1 of the Google rankings. If you’re competing with other small blogs with about your level of interest and investment, you can move forward; otherwise you might want to narrow down or modify your theme. Above all, though, you need to find something that you love to write (and read) about, do your homework, and start hammering away at it.

1. Create user-friendly content

If you’re already an engaging writer, this part is easy. A large block of unadorned text might be fairly easy to get through in a book or magazine, but people read online content differently, and you need to incorporate a few simple style tricks to convert your content into a digestible online format. You’ll notice that these tricks are almost universally applied by big professional content providers:

• Numbered Lists” some commentators are annoyed by the overuse of numbered list format; but it’s popular because it works. Numbered lists are a great way to divide your content into little bite-sized packages, and that’s how online consumers like it.
• Images: interspersing your content with funny pictures is valuable for the same reason; it’s an easy “spoonful of sugar” to keep the viewer’s attention. Obviously you want to tie everything together—lazily jamming irrelevant images into your content will only distract and confuse—but the right image can help you make your point while keeping a light, approachable tone.
• Keep it brief: If you can’t say it in less than 1000 words, your topic might be too ambitious for a single blog post. You can cut it up into installments, or just focus down to a more specific idea. 500 to 700 words is a good average length for a blog post

1. Get connected with like-minded bloggers

Before you start pulling traffic from search engines, you need to catch readers clicking through from other sites. Find successful bloggers who share your interests, and offer to guest post on their sites. You’ll have to sacrifice good content for your own blog (most blogs require unique content in their guest posts), but don’t be afraid to commit high-quality work—it’s a small investment that will pay big dividends in establishing your online reputation.

At the bottom of each guest post, you can include a signature with a link to your site, which will draw users and get your site noticed by search engines. If you provide solid content in your guest posts and build good relationships with your fellow bloggers, you can invite them to start swapping links to your content in their posts and driving more traffic to your site. Ultimately, these networks of links are what will get people reading your blog, clicking your ads, and earning you money.

Tiffany Gantt is a staff writer for ApronAddicts.com, a website dedicated to the love of cooking and looking good while you do it! You can often find her getting creative in the kitchen as she whips up something yummy in one of her flirty, color coordinated aprons.