More and more people are starting to blog nowadays. If you are new to blogging, the most pertinent thing is to understand the difference between a blog and a static website. A static website is one written in a computer language such as HTML or javascript. It contains pages relevant to what a website is about. A blog also contains pages about a certain topic but the main difference is that a static website is generally unchanged unless updates need to be made to the content or if the webmaster decides to change the design of the website whereas a blog is dynamic in its contents. A blog’s content is updated regularly as often as the blogger desires (it can be several times a day). That’s what makes a blog interesting, and that’s why search engines in their quest to bring relevant and fresh content to searchers favor listing blogs.
So a blog is an ongoing updated series of content about a particular topic. Many people blog just for the fun of it by keeping an online diary of their activities regularly. But if you are intending to make your blog profitable, it takes a lot more skill. What are some of the skills needed for a profitable blog?
Firstly, there is the skill of finding a profitable niche. A niche is a topic people are interested in and therefore would draw readers to the blog. Many internet marketers advocate choosing a niche based on your likes, interests, hobbies and experience. But that would be too restrictive. If your aim is to make money with your blog, then it follows that you need to blog about what people are interested in and not necessarily what you may be interested in personally. Two sources to find niches people are interested in are Google Hot Trends and Wordtracker. Google Hot Trends gives you an hour-by-hour listing about what topics receive the most searches in Google. Go through this list and find any you may want to blog about. Once you identify one, insert the main keyword of this niche into Wordtracker. Wordtracker gives you a daily search count on a particular keyword and a list of related keywords. A good rule of thumb is that if a keyword gets above 100 searches in Wordtracker, it is a profitable niche. So if you find a niche topic in both Google Hot Trends and Wordtracker to blog about, you’ve got a potential money maker.
Secondly, there’s the skill of getting your blog in front of as many people as possible. This is also called traffic generation. For this, the important thing to do is find people interested in the topic of your niche. Visit forums related to the topic and become a participator. You will be able to add your blog URL to your signature file and when people want to find out more about your topic, they will click on your URL and be brought to your blog. Another important thing to do is introduce your blog to others by bookmarking it in social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Furl etc. If your blog topic is a popular one according to Google Hot Trends, chances are there would be many other people interested to read whatever is in your blog.
The final thing that is needed is the means to monetize your blog. This can be done through on-topic advertisement services like Adsense and Chitika or in-text advertisement services like Kontera.Once your blog has generated a large enough readership over time, you can further monetize it by selling advertisement space.
Making your blog profitable is a challenging venture. If you like blogging, making money from it would be an added bonus.
