More and more people are realising that blogging is one of the best 
ways to start your own online business.  It requires minimal start up 
costs, you can build an impressive and loyal readership over time and 
once you know how to monetize your blog it can also bring in a decent 
income that will keep on coming even on the days when you don’t update 
your blog.
There are several ways to set up a blog online.  You could use 
WordPress, Blogger, or another free site that hosts your blog for you; 
or alternatively you can set up your own blog under your own domain 
name.
If you want to make serious money from blogging, you must have 
complete control over your blog – and that’s something the free blogging
 accounts won’t give you.  You’ll be bound by their terms and conditions
 and that usually includes not being able to actively promote anything. 
 There are plenty of people who have established a blog only to have it 
removed without notice some weeks or months later.
It will cost you a few dollars to buy your domain name and set up a 
web server that will host your blog, but the benefits will far outweigh 
the cost involved.  It can literally be as little as $20 a year we’re 
talking about here – and that buys you total freedom.
Once you’re ready to set your blog up you’ll need to choose a good 
theme and layout for it.  You might find one that relates to your choice
 of subject (more on that in a moment) or else there might be one you 
just like the look of.  But there are thousands of templates available 
for you to use – a simple search on Google will reveal the ones that 
will be best suited to your topic.
But perhaps the most important question is what you are going to blog
 about.  The whole world is your oyster here – some people blog about 
their lives in general; some blog about their jobs; some blog about 
their hobbies; some tell the world about their kids and what it’s like 
to be a parent, and still others blog about the weird world of 
celebrities.  But whatever you choose to blog about it needs to be 
something you are passionate about.  Don’t forget, you are going to be 
writing about this topic several times a week, and if you don’t have the
 enthusiasm for it, that will show in your posts – and no one else will 
have the enthusiasm to read them.
Okay – so you’ve got your subject.  Now you have to start writing 
your blog posts.  If you take a look at just a few of the blogs already 
online, you’ll notice that the length of the posts varies a lot.  Some 
people only write a paragraph or two each time, but you’ll get better 
results if you go for something a little longer than this.  Around 400 
to 500 words makes for a good post with a lot of information in it; some
 people write hugely long posts that are thousands of words long and 
could be called an e-book by another name.
But you can also take the format of this blog, by posting a short 
blog entry which leads into a longer article.  This has the benefit of 
highlighting a lot of blog posts on the home page of the site, and 
people can then click through and read the ones they like the most.
You should remember however that there are no real rules when it 
comes to blogging.  Over time you will naturally find what works for 
you, and your blog will settle down into a nice pattern that both you 
and your readers will enjoy.  You’ll find your character and personality
 will start to come through in your writing too; don’t fight against 
this as it is one of the hallmarks of blogging.  It is, after all, a 
personal account of an individual’s life and experiences, so show people
 what you’re made of!  You’ll get a more loyal – and bigger – audience 
like this.
So you’ve got your blog up and running and you’re posting to it on a 
regular basis.  The next step is to get it in front of as many 
interested eyeballs as possible.
One great way to do this is to submit it to as many of the social 
bookmarking sites as possible.  You can also join social networking 
sites and build a profile which contains a link to your blog.  Other no 
cost ways to generate traffic include writing free articles for article 
directories with a link to your blog at the end, and creating signatures
 at the end of any posts you make to internet forums, and also in all 
the emails you send out.  When you really start thinking about it, you 
don’t actually need to spend anything to generate plenty of traffic.
All we need to do now is monetize the blog itself.  You’ll want to 
generate some money from all the visitors you’ll start getting, and 
there are plenty of ways to do this easily.  Google Adsense is probably 
the most well known method – you can join the program for free and 
display contextual ads that your visitors will be interested in to 
maximise your click through rate.
There are also a handful of websites which give you the opportunity 
to get paid for each blog post you make on a specific subject.  Pay Per 
Post and Review Me are two such examples, and they will pay you a 
certain amount of money to review a product or website for the owner.  
In a similar vein you can also review and recommend other people’s 
products through affiliate links inserted into your blog posts, and earn
 money on commissions earned through any purchases people make.
And once you’re more established you can offer ad space on your blog 
too, and charge a fee for both classified and display ads if you wish.  
What could be better than setting your own price?
But there is one final step you can take with your blog if you enjoy a
 change of scene every now and again.  You can sell your blog!  Once it 
is established and has plenty of revenue and traffic, you can usually 
sell it for ten times its monthly revenue.
And then, you can start all over again with a whole new subject!
So that’s it – profitable blogging in a nutshell.  If you have any 
questions feel free to leave your comments in the form below.  And once 
you’ve done that, get out there and get started building your first blog
 today.
 to find out how one “stay at home mom” is making $379/day working from home using eBay & Google. Read the full story here.
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