You’ve heard it, no doubt. Make money from home by blogging your way to riches, right? Well…yeah, but is it really that simple? Start a blog, monetize it, and then watch the money roll in! Wrong. Unfortunately that all sounds good on paper, but it doesn’t roll like that.
The internet has been around for years and it’s evolved so much it’s unrecognizable from the earlier days. Everything has changed, and that goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) everything will continue to change. What used to work then does not work now.
How to Make Money From Blogging 2013
Some things will always be constant. You will always be able to make a blog, monetize it, and make money from it. It’s the methods and the ways you do it that will change. People aren’t as willing to click on ads anymore when they see them. We’re getting smarter. It’s most likely because the epidemic of overwhelming pop up ads in the beginning days made us immune to seeing them or clicking on them. Too much of a good thing always ends up being a bad thing.
So how do you do it?
What Will Make or Break Your Blog – Keyword Research
If you already have a blog, or you’re thinking about starting one, the first thing you want to do is make sure it’s actually something people are searching for information on, or have an interest in. You do this by conducting “keyword research”. I’ve found the best way to do this is using the Google Keyword Tool (this is free). The URL for it is changing quite a bit, so just do a quick Google search and it should pop right up for you.
Once you’ve entered your keyword ideas and filled out the captcha form, Google will give you a massive list of keywords you can chose from. Make sure that you check the “Exact” box instead of broad or phrase. This will give you the exact number of searches for that keyword. (You can find these boxes on the left of your screen.) You want to make sure that you’re keyword has at least 5,000 searches locally. You can obviously tweak this to your own judgement, but anything less than 5,000 seems to be harder to make money with.
When you find a good keyword you’re interested in, the next thing is to check the competition. I do this by going back to Google search, and I type in the keyword in quotes. I do it in quotes because this will give me an accurate number of websites that are targeting that specific keyword with they keyword in the title. When I click search, right underneath the search bar, Google shows me the number of websites targeting that keyword. You want to keep your competition under 20,000. If you find a keyword that matches both criteria (at least 5,000 local searches and less than 20,000 competition, you’ve found a good one.)
Keyword research is probably the most frustrating part of making money online from blogging. It takes a while, and sometimes when you think you’ve found a good targeted keyword, you’re let down because there’s too much competition, or too little traffic. Without good research though, you WILL FAIL. Make sure you have a plan, and you go after specific words. Do not just throw up a website or page or post and hope for the best. A man without a plan plans to fail.
Okay, So After Keyword Research, What’s Next?
Now you’ve got a good idea, good keywords to target, what’s next? The next step is making sure your blog is optimized for the search engines. This is known as SEO (search engine optimization.) You can read a LOT about this online, but the key to SEO is really knowing that it is CONSTANTLY changing. The search engines are changing their algorithms so much, there is not one way to teach you how to do it. Like I said in the beginning, back in the day it was easy to dominate the internet.
The search engines today have focused on making the internet more user friendly, which is what we ALL want. Remember searching for something, and you thought you found a great website that would give you what you were looking for, and when you clicked on the link it turned out to be nothing but spammy garbage? People made a LOT of money that way, but as users, it was an extremely terrible experience.
The best thing to do is focus on user experience. Make sure your blog is made for your readers. Add social bookmarking tools so they can share your articles with other people. The search engines KNOW when you’ve put up crappy content. Trust me. Give your readers what they want, make it easy for them to share your content, and add new content frequently.
Monetizing Your Blog
You can do this so many different ways. You can use Google Adsense (here’s a previous post I wrote on how to make money from google), you can sign up for various affiliate programs, or you can sell your own product.
The key thing to remember here is offering your visitors products that they will actually use or find helpful. Don’t offer them junk. Your readers will never come back, and if you lose repeat visitors, it’s like losing repeat customers on a traditional brick and mortar business.
Treat your blog as a business – not just a hobby. It IS your business.You will see a huge increase in sales when you start blogging for business rather than hobby.
If you really want to learn how to make money from blogging in the year 2013, here are 2 free reports you can download that have some incredible information in them. They are currently free (even though they could be charged for) and you’ll find valuable information in them that you probably won’t come across doing searches. 
How to Make Money From Blogging 2013
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