Make Money Blogging Naturally

Pretty much every day I get a question from my subscribers or customers about making money blogging.  Here are some common questions:

1. Do I focus on one blog or create 20-30 blogs and make a little money from each blog?
2. What do I post to my blog?
3. How do I make money from my blog?
4. What should my blog design look like?
5. How much money can I make from my blog?

It is great to hear so many people asking about blogging, because there really is a great opportunity IF you follow some basic principles. 

1. Choose An Audience You Know You Can Address:  You may want to write about your experience as a parent, your love of food, a favorite type of pet, or give your audience some hot business advice…these are all valid topics, the key is align your topic with something you enjoy so your passion will come through and writing every couple of days isn’t so much a chore as it is something you love to do. 

2. Build A Following, The Money Will Flow:  Even if you have ideas on how you want to make money from your blog, start out by giving to your audience, not trying to sell them anything right off the bat.  You want to build likeability, trust, readership and participation.  Once people like you, they are far more likely to buy what you recommend. 

3. Post frequently and use personality:  I like to post every one to two days and share everything from personal observations, helpful tips, techniques and strategies, case studies, interviews, or just an opinion on a topic of the day that I believe my audience will be interested in. 

4. Mix product and service recommendations into your posts…yes, as you build your blog you can begin to place some advertising into the navigation panels, perhaps have a resource, FAQ or specific product pages and even include reviews or recommendations within some of your blog posts…the objective is to find great resources that will be of benefit to your audience.  If they are parents, Amazon books on parenting, kids vitamins or health products, even specific children’s toys may be relevant as long as you do your homework and ideally have some personal experience to share. 

5. Learn to keep your posts short, educational, intriguing and leave them with a question to get your readers involved.  Many top blogs generate 90% of their content from comments which continue to come in weeks and months after the initial post.  All of the content created by those who comment on your blog helps tremendously to enhance organic search results and RSS feed rankings which, of course, means more readers, more comments and on the cycle goes.

6. Run polls and surveys.  As your readership grows, I like to continually run polls and surveys. Not only does this get my readers involved, but it creates more content I can post about (people love to hear about survey results) and it gives me insight into what my audience mindset is, what their frustrations and desires are and what products and services they may be interested in. 

In some respects, building a blog means putting your profit plans on hold for at least a few weeks, sometimes a few months while you focus on targeting a specific market, develop interesting content and build your readership.  Soon enough, you will be making money with your blog, if you have built that monetization on a strong foundation then your profits will continue to grow over time.

If you have a blog, have any of you got other tips to share with newbie bloggers? 

If you are just getting your blog rolling, what questions do you have that our audience can help you with?