Selena Gomez - Image via Wikipedia
If you plan on blogging for fun that’s great because there are many others like you, people who want to write about something that really interests them and perhaps their friends and family members. As a Hobby Blogger you can choose how often to update your blog. Your readers are personally known to you and will not mind if you take a break every now and then and do not post anything new. After a writing hiatus you update your blog and simply contact your readers by email, group text, Twitter, Facebook, or in-person with the new posts.
If you would like to make money blogging, your blog updates will need to be more regular. Why? People are looking for information that is useful, interesting and appeals to them. If you attract faithful readers it is probably because you are a good writer, have a subject (niche) that interests them or you provide good information, perhaps all three. As a blog owner you will need to provide regular blog posts yourself, by downloading articles from Article Directories like eZine and Goarticles or by having guest bloggers writing for your blog. Free subscriptions to News Wire Services in your subject area, that provide relevant news release stories will help you provide fresh articles for your readers, with you having to do little more than perhaps an edit or two.
The advantage of running your blog on a for-profit basis means you will be earning money for doing something you enjoy. How cool is that? How much money you earn will be determined by a number of factors such as:How popular is your blog? (Translation….how many regular readers do you have?) The more readers the more interesting your blog becomes to advertisers. A good example: A baby products manufacturer may be interested in advertising on a blog about new-born babies.
What is your niche or specialty? If you are blogging about celebrities like Justin Bieber, there are millions of potential readers. There will also be a huge number of competitors. If you are blogging about your local city attractions there will be a smaller potential international audience but a potentially large local audience with fewer, if any, competitors. The international audience numbers could jump dramatically if your municipality does something really noteworthy either good or bad.
Potential advertisers look at these factors to determine if your blog would be a good place to invest their advertising dollars. Advertisers or sponsors can be found in your neighborhood if your niche is local. You could solicit the advertisers yourself or pay someone commission to find them, in the same way that your local newspaper does.
If your blog niche has a worldwide appeal like celebrity blogging (think Selena Gomez, Kate Middleton, Adele), then you could attract readers from a large or potentially, worldwide audience. By formatting your blog pages in advance with blank ad spaces to accommodate advertisements, it is possible to earn money from advertisements placed on your blog by Google, Amazon, eBay or Yahoo to name a few. It simply requires setting up an account with each of these organizations and adding a line of code they provide, into a plugin in the administration area of your blog.
This is all less complicated than it sounds. In subsequent articles we will cover the ins and outs of today’s simple yet sophisticated Blog Templates by WordPress and Blogger that automatically format the space on a page to accommodate advertising and allow the advertisements to be “automatically dropped in” once your accounts have been set up.
