Blogging was once a relatively unknown form of writing & journalism, but now it’s extremely common now, and many people make a full time living as a blogger. If you have information to share, have a passion for sharing your opinion and can spend a few minutes each day writing, then you can make money online blogging.
Setting up a blog is quite easy, and you can generally get started writing within an hour or 2 even with the most complicated type of blog. The two main types of blogs that you’ll need to consider are self-hosted and third-party hosted blogs. This website is an example of a self-hosted blog, whereas this site is a third-party hosted blog. Each type has its own benefits, but unless you’re comfortable with computers or are friends with someone who is, you may want to stick with a third-party solution as they do almost all of the setup for you.
The 2 best free blogging platforms for third-party blogs are:
Each of these sites allows fairly easy setup, and you get get started right away. The disadvantage of these sites is the lack of flexibility that self-hosted blogs offer, such as plugins, custom themes, and integration with social media services like Twitter and Facebook. If you decide you want to go with a self-hosted option, you’ll need 2 things to get started:
- A domain name (ie Yourname.com)
- Web hosting
GoDaddy.com is an excellent choice for a domain name, they have reliable service and some of the best pricing available with domains costing as little as $9/year. Well worth it!
There are several options available for web hosting as well, most charge between $5 and $9 per month, which is a fantastic deal. Here are some of the sites I’ve used:
There are many tutorials available online about how to set up Wordpress on your website, most hosts have an installation service called Fantastico which offers a one-click install for most common website software including Wordpress. This makes it incredibly easy to set up a blog; all you need to do is type in the title of the blog and a couple of other options, and you’re ready to go.
Once you have a blog set up, you can customize it with different Themes and Plugins. One of the most common means of monetizing a blog is Google AdSense. It’s easy to set up whether you’re using Blogger or a self-hosted blog, and is one of the easiest ways to make money online. The service will display ads related to the content on your blog, and you get paid every time someone clicks an ad. You can sign up for AdSense here. Another common means of monetizing a blog is what’s known as affiliate marketing, which I’ll cover in another article soon.
Start writing! Typical blog posts are between 250 and 1,000 words long, and may include links, photos, lists, and of course plain text. Don’t be sloppy, but you can write casually as with informal emails. This depends on the type of blog however; a blog about hobby fishing will be more suited to casual writing than one about financial matters.
Traffic may be slow at first, but you can help this by adding your website to social bookmarking websites, such as the ones down below this article. A well-crafted blog can become a solid income producer, as well as letting you proudly refer to yourself as a professional blogger.
Have fun blogging!
Tags: blogging, earn money, make money online, money, writing
