Make Money With Your Blog

People choose different reasons to pursue blogging in their spare time such as to earn additional income to pay bills or take a vacations they normally couldn’t afford. Some do it simply as a form of self expression, in order to entertain both themselves and their readers. Others keep personal blogs and share them only with close family and friends. Serious bloggers monetize their blogs and generate profits for themselves. Here we will discuss the ins and outs of blogging for money.

Setting up a blog does not cost much unless you decide to host your blog on your own domain. You can set up a free blog using Blogger or WordPress, or host your blog on your own domain by spening a little money. If you do this, make sure to install a free program such as WordPress to help administer and update your blog. Before starting a blog, think about what your blog should be about. Sticking to a particular niche or topic is how online blogs become successful. This way you can focus your audience for maximum earning potential. Once your blog is set up, you then must start promoting your blog in order to gain an audience. There are many different methods of promotion, but one of the best is posting on other blogs that are related to your niche. Once your blog is online and you have been posting for a period of time, then it’s time to start generating profits.

Trade Advertising – is how one can earn extra cash on their blog. One method of blog monetization involves selling advertising space on your blog to businesses that are related to your niche. Most bloggers rent the space out for a set period of time.

Affiliate Marketing – This involves placing advertisements on your site from advertising companies such as Google Adsense. You will receive some money for every blog user that clicks on the advertised link.

Ask for Contributions – If your blog readers value you blog, they may consider contributing to help pay your hosting and other miscellaneous fees. Once your blog becomes popular, you may want to make it private and charge a small membership fee.

Sell Your Products and Services – A great business model to help you achieve online success is to use your blog and market your own services, products, and tools. Blogging purely for entertainment is limiting yourself.

As we see interest in the blogosphere grow at a rapid rate, it is becoming more apparent that blogging can be an excellent source of income. You just have to remember to work hard and stay focused on your goals. Making use of various strategies, one can become successful at blogging for money.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Borough Market - mind your own business
Image by NMB 2009 via Flickr

Starting your own home-based business to make money online can be a daunting task.  Watch out for these common mistakes and save yourself a lot of stress and worry.

1. Trying To Make Everything Work From A Single Website

If you’re just starting out with your home-based business, don’t try to take on the bigwigs and try to be all things to all people.  Find your niche and stick with it; once you’ve made a success out of it, you can start to expand your repertoire.

2.  You’re Spamming

While it may be a no-brainer to not send spam email, keep in mind that some types of forum posting can also be considered spam.  Most forums have pretty clear rules about what is acceptable; some are stricter than others, but no reputable forum will accept out and out advertisements.  Forum posting and email campaigns can be a great way to reach you audience; just make sure that your sending quality information to a targeted audience. The short-term benefits of spamming aren’t worth the long-term effect of losing your credibility, not to mention the possibility of fines or being shut down.

3.  Ignoring The Effect Of Credibility

When starting your home-based business, you don’t have a large corporation or name behind you.  You have to build your credibility from the ground up, and it’s a lot easier to lose than to gain. Stand behind your product or service, treat your customers with respect and be completely transparent in all your business dealings and you’ll be fine.

4.  Expecting To Get Results By Just Sitting Back

While it is possible to run a home-based business that will make money automatically, it doesn’t start out that way.  All businesses require time and effort to establish. Passive income doesn’t magically work.  Once you’ve put in a lot of hard work, you may be able to generate revenue with a minimal amount of work.  You must still maintain the business, however; ignore any venture completely (no matter how successful) and it will fail.

5.  Forgetting To Research Your Niche Market

Does a market exist for your product?  Are there too many products already in the market? Once you’ve identified them, concentrate your efforts. The more specific a target you can identify, the more effective your marketing efforts will be.

6.  Using Ineffective Marketing

Far too many people rely solely on the promoting every single feature of their products or services. Sure it is important to know what the features are, however what really sells the products are the benefits. Buyers make decisions a lot more on emotions rather than logic. You have to address your potential customers in the form they want it; show them what they will get from it and how it will be beneficial to them and to their lives.

7.  Forgetting The Importance Of Building Relationships

Treating customers right can lead to repeat business and referrals. People want to feel important and valued.  In the faceless and sometimes cold world of online business, this is more important than ever.

8.  Forgetting That Your Home-Based Business Is A Business

Far too common a mistake is that people tend to view a home-based business as one where in even if they fail, their costs are minimal compared to brick and mortar business. Don’t forget your time is also an investment and the cost of time has to have a price. What is the price of your time? How much would you charge others for your time? Think about it, unless you are doing this simply as a hobby then working home-based business is much like working at the conventional job; the only difference is you’re the boss.

9.  You Didn’t Build A Plan

Many businesses, home-based or otherwise, fail because they don’t have a plan. In order to succeed, you must have a plan with definable goals for next week, next month, or next year.  Having a list and goals will help you stay focused and not get distracted by the small problems and obstacles that come up on a daily basis.

10.  You never learn

The internet is an ever changing monster, and along with it the way you do business also changes. In order maintain a sustainable online business, you have to keep your sell up to date on these changes, both in the general business world and in your specific market or niche. Utilize the new innovations and technology such as what is provided by Portal Feeder that come up to further improve the efficiency and productivity of your home-based-business.

These are ten mistakes that you can easily avoid. Keep them in mind and learn from them, use the knowledge you have just gathered and ensure that your business does not make any of these, as the success of your home-based-business and the revenue you make depends on you avoiding them.

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Business Plan in a Day book
Image by Raymond Yee via Flickr

You’ve heard that it’s easy to make money online.  You’ve heard that everyone is doing it.  You decided to try it for yourself, and now you’re disillusioned and disappointed.  You figure it was all a sham.  Well maybe, the problem isn’t with the internet, it’s with you. See if you’ve been making these common mistakes that are keeping you from making money online. These mistakes could be any of the following most common reasons.

The Product You Picked Is Wrong

Either you picked a product that’s not selling, or you picked a product you know nothing about.  Both are a guaranteed way to fail to make money online.  Do your market research, and make sure that you pick a product that is easy to sell online, and make sure that there are people who want to buy it.  As well, make sure that you know about it.  Even if bicycle horns are selling like crazy, if you don’t know anything about them, it will show and people will choose to buy their bicycle horns from a more knowledgeable seller.

You Forgot To Test The Product

If you don’t know how a product works, you’re never going to be able to sell it well.  And how can you answer questions about the product and solve possible problems if you don’t have a working knowledge of your product?  Your customers will lose faith in you and you’ll lose all chances of repeat business or referral sales.  At worst, you could also get bad press at review sites, making other customers choose to go elsewhere.

You Took A Direct Route To Step 10

You may think that you know all you need to know about making money online, and that you can go straight to overseeing multiple products on a variety of sites.  Now you’ve got a multitude of eggs in too many baskets, and none of them are making any money. Stop.  Sit back, and make a plan.  Start out with one or two products.  Make a cohesive business strategy that you can follow step-by-step.  If you these products start making money, you can use your business plan as a blueprint to add more products and sites to make even more money online.

You think you’re going to get rich overnight

It is possible to make money online.  Actually, it is possible to make a lot of money online. Thinking that you’re going to start making that kind of money right away, however, will only set you up for failure.   Again, go back to your business strategy; work at your business and keep working until you start to gather momentum. Also, just because it’s online doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy or require no effort from you. You have to assume that you’re going to have to work hard and be smart to make your business into a success.

You gave up too soon

This may seem counter intuitive to the last point, but it is just as valid.  Just as you can’t expect to start raking in the money instantly, you also can’t give up if things are a little slower than you expected.  Slow and steady wins the race.  If you’ve done a solid business plan and started out with only a couple of products, and you stay consistent and put some effort into it, you’ll be making money online in no time.

These mistakes are so common at over 90% of people trying to make money online fail because of them. They had the will and the guts to try and no matter what they did, they just couldn’t find the holy grail. Does that sound familiar? Well what’s missing is the right direction, tools, planning, and methodology. Making money online and even in the real world is a combination of the right tools and processes, along with the proper decision making.

So if your down on your luck and need to find the right path to making money online checkout what Portal Feeder has to offer. It’s a proven system with the right tools, training, people and resources that you’ll need to succeed online.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post