As an extension to the last lesson, i wanted to talk more about the value of blogs and how they can make you money. As i was writing out the iternaray for this course, i decided i should get most of the basic information out of the way.

Choosing your blog theme – what is it about and who is it for.
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The first thing you must decide is who your blog is for and what purpose it serves. A blog about personal situations or general views on life is possiply interesting to some, but not anything that would build the right amount of traffic to make money. Your blog has to serve a purpose and it must have something that is knowledgable and useful to others. So you have to ask yourself, once you decide what your theme is about, who is it for? The answer just simply has to be something, as if it is nothing, then you have a problem. Your answer maybe ‘gothic freaks’ or ‘celebrity junkies’ or ‘old people who used to have kids but just spend there days reading about people who do have kids’ . whatever the answer maybe, it simply has to exist. As if you answered that question with a ‘i dont know, who ever reads it i guess’ , then you have a serious problem. If you don’t intend to make money from your blog, then by all means , please blog your hearts desire, but as this is a course on blogging for money – you obviously have no choice but to find the answer to that question.
You may be asking yourself why such a long winded section on such a small princable? easy – people miss this point by a mile every time. I don’t know how many blogs i have seen that people i know or whatever had started. Its not a question of wether they are trying to make money until they put ads on there blog – at which point you laugh and say ‘whos going to visit this site?’ – the exact question i ask you.

My point is, this isn’t as diffacult as it seems or may make it out to be – its just important.

How Does a Blog make money? don’t you have to sell something?
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No, fortunately you do not have to sell something. But i urge you to find something that you can – to help make your streams of revenue larger and more expanse – and ill explain how that works in a moment. First, lets explain how a simple blog can make money.
By displaying ads. Yes – its that easy. You simply display ads on your site. Of course, driving traffic to your website without spending money on advertising ( the exact system you use to earn revenue ) is the hard part, and the same reason i emphasize certain points to help you be more successful.
You will set up a ad system with a company like google ( they call there system ‘AdSense’ ) , they gather bids on advertising and then you take a code snippet, place it on your site where you want the ad to appear, and they decide which ads to display based on your traffic and such. After a certain amount of unique visitors you can expect steady clicks on your ads. At which point, you will see revenue. Once you get the ball rolling, its really important to keep the ball rolling. Your prime directive is content. You must post about something that is useful on a regular basis.
Yes, these clicks often at first will be about 5 per 100 visitors, depending on traffic level, and they will equal anywhere from a penny to more depending on how effective the click was. These are things you don’t need to worry about. The point is, the more traffic, the more clicks, the more cash. You wont see any money from 100 or 1000 visitors a day ( maybe a dollor a day , maybe ). But its in the multiple thousands you want to reach. The great thing about ads is you will see where your traffic goes and what they are most atuned to ( what is most useful to them ).

This following course is intended for the no-brainer get me started so i can start blogging user. You could hire me, or someone else, to set up your blog and so on – but i have bigger fish to fry, and if you dont have money to burn, i suggest you try it. Remember, computers are built to serve us, not the other way around. There is nothing that hasn’t been done before that you can do for the first time. Blogging is an adventure.

So as more and more of my friends and family begin to blog and get there own wordpress installs and so on, the more i am asked ‘What should i do’? Right, i am no millionaire blogger, but i have seen what works and what doesn’t. There are a lot of informational products out there that can make someone wonder ‘how can i make money blogging’? and that’s a great question, but there is a lot to be said about blogging for money.

First you have to understand that it is not the easiest thing to do – infact, nothing on the internet is easy anymore. With so many people doing the same thing, only persistence , good marketing knowledge, and the right tools will get you far.
There is no ‘quick rich’ schemes, or ‘fool proof plans’ to make you rich. Dont get me wrong, about five years ago, i was trying to find the ’secret’ of wealth. though i still haven’t found the “glory fountain” of schemes, i have learned a lot, and stopped looking for the quick way to make money.

Second, you must understand – you are going to be trying to make money based on work, not a sit-back-and-wait. I guess i just mentioned that, but it is important. In my years of free-lancing , the projects that went no-where, but had potential, were the ones that recieved no support ( through extra blogs, posts, viral embedding, etc,… ). A blog is, in its self, now one of the most hardest things to make hit the top. Your time and investment is your best bet on a success of a blog. And i am talking simply non-adult blogs and blogs that are educational. I know a blog about ‘how to make money’ is always going to do better more quicker because of the affilitaed products that are sold, and the fact that everyone wants to make money. Its a stronger keyword then porn !

Third, you have to pick a social topic. Something that is useful – the value of your words is what will attract users and bring traffic. Some examples of how this worked really well was in the late ninteys and at the early turn of the century when the information market exploded on the internet. Everyone was writing e-books and selling them for nothing ( 5.99 – 14.99 ). This was an awesome adventure for a lot of marketers on the net then, and even though that is still very strong today – a blog is more productive and more profitble then a book.

There was this fella in 1999 that had wrote a 20 page e-book about how to paint pewter minitures ( the Dungeons and Dragons characters – they are usually a soft pewter and silver – they are intended to be painted on or left clean ). This was something this kid knew a lot about. Because the inforamtion was useful and full of tips on how to paint the perfect figurine, its usefulness was through the roof. The fella sold the e-book for 8 bucks and sold over a million in one month.Yeah, thats 8 million bucks in a month. Minus ebays fees – which at the time was none, and taxes ( which i hope he paid ), he still made more then he could have dreamed holding a local hour long lesson at the grange. The e-book world is still thriving, but as diffacult to break into – the fella i was mentioning also had the power of the market on his side. No one else had written the same book on the same subject. There was some random sites on geocities that had relevant information, but none were as skilled as the fella we mentioned. That also had the most effect on his ability to sell his book, and sell it well.
If you, right now, wrote a book on how to make a succefull website, or how to install wordpress, you might see a traffic boost, but nothing to special. If you wrote your own wordpress plugin/theme or shared a really cool peice of code with everyone, then you might see a lot more traffic – and more organic then before.

In this blog series i will be showing you how to set up your website from scratch, using wordpress, installing it ( like a pro) and how to install/configure/customize wordpress to your liking. I will also be introducing google adsense and anylitics and how to utilize the tools to your advantage. You are more then welcomed to skipp that whole section and pay me to install and customize wordpress for you – but even then, you could probably learn a lot and save yourself some money learning how to do it yourself.
I know i am not the most consitant blogger, but for this, i will do my best.

Blogging For Money – Internet Educational Course – year 1

1)Basic Blogging ( this article )
2) Setting Up Hosting ( godaddy is used as an example )
3) Installing Word Press
4) WordPress Options
5) Themes/Plugins for Wordpress
6)Google Adsense and Anylitics
7) Other Revenue Systems like Adsense
Wordpress Advanced Theme Customization 101
9) Wordpress Advanced Theme Customization 102
10) Wordpress Advanced Theme Customization 103

That TOC will become links and it will all be under a specific category. I will be including my favorite tools and video-tutorials as well.

Until next Time,

-Dave