10 Steps to Earn from your Blog

I started blogging in 2007 and luckily for me I was immediately accepted by Google when I applied as a publisher. I chose European Royalty as my first blog because I've a keen interest in the history of monarchy in Europe so writing topics for this niche became very easy. It was not until 2010 that I created a travel blog and began pursuing dreams to be a full time travel blogger. However, due to my limited time (I've a regular day-job), breezing full time into blogging is a remote possibility. I am not losing hope though, I know someday I can fulfill this long-standing dream.

I'd read tons of resources and information from bloggers who dared to leave their regular job, most of them in a corporate world, and decided to become full time travel bloggers, their testimonies inspired me to make things happen because all of them appeared very happy, highly successful and fulfilled being paid and earned to do stuff they love doing.

However, I need to work hard first with my promotional campaigns and traffic before deciding to jump into the game. But blogging is really a profitable passion if you are willing to take risks. 

Some of my friends asked how blogging generates income, why on earth bloggers think this is an ideal career to pursue when it does not sound like an incredible cash machine, unlike when there's a regular job with fixed income from employers. 

My answer is -- blogging provides a steady flow of income if you are dead serious with this passion. It's more like handling your business, you must have unique products that capture interest among buyers, promotional campaigns to do and good PR skill to get on the game and become successful. Remember that there are billions of bloggers around the world that compete each other for page views, loyal followers and ads sponsorship, so you must be extremely unique with your style to create a distinctive presence in the market.

I've been studying quite a number of years how to stay very competitive in the world of blogging, I've been experimenting techniques, styles and strategies also how to boost blog traffic and increase earnings. Although working actively every weekend on link buildings helps a lot in driving traffic, the limited time takes a toll in earnings. Blogging, just like any regular jobs, requires time, effort, devotion and attention on a daily basis.

So if you gonna ask me what are the effective strategies in generating a steady flow of income in blogging should you consider taking it a full time career, here are my tips:

1. Make sure you have a great passion in blogging because, just like creating and maintaining a business, income in the blogging world has also ups and downs, if you have no insurmountable passion to enjoy what you are doing, you will be easily discouraged when bad days of low points hit you. If you are very passionate in blogging, you can wind off challenges.

2. Target a specific topic and choose your niche, meaning identify the field of interest where you find the easiest to share and write stories, a field of interest which you are very passionate about. If you love traveling, then choose to be a travel blogger. If you like movies, celebrities, showbiz, then be an entertainment blogger, if you love fashion and trend, you may choose to blog about fashion, if you are expert in technology, then try building a technology blog. Do not mix up your topics in a single blog, advertisers are very strict with niches, they want topics to be segregated into a specific field of interest. Most of all, choose a niche that bests interest you. Do not choose a specific niche just because the trend tells you to select it or because it is the current demand in blogging, no, you will never endure the exhausting routine of preparing updates and sharing your experiences/stories because you are just forcing yourself to throw into the demand, survival is very difficult with this kind of style. But if you like what you are doing, exhaustion and weariness can't stop you from pursuing your passion.

3. Buy a domain, choose your hosting package - If you want to make blogging a serious business, you really have to buy your own domain. Buying a hosting package is optional, though strongly recommended. A domain is the one that will give you an independent URL, e.g: .com, .net, .org, there are lots of domain vendors online that offer affordable prices, the rate of renewal is always on annual basis. Your domain needs to be hosted to be visible in the web, mostly domain vendors also offer hosting packages and you will be billed usually for this type of package monthly or quarterly. It's a bit expensive compared to domain. However, you can choose to host your site for free, try www.blogger.com. In my case, I only bought domain for each of my two sites and retained my hosting in blogger.

4. Start working on your niche. If you choose to be a travel blogger, read as many travel resources and information as you can, go out to the city, take a road trip, foreign trips, try anything adventurous and gather as many experiences as you can so that you can share your stories extensively to your readers. 

5. Promotional campaigns. Just like any businesses eager to gain loyal customers and clients, you must create a wide presence in the market by actively promoting your links through social media, blog communities and exchanging links with other sites. Create an independent facebook page for your site, twitter page, pinterest and other social media platform to build a community fan page of you site where you can regularly promote your links.

6. Link building. Meaning you have to actively participate in a blog community relevant to your niche. You can do this by searching a travel community forum online if you are a travel blogger. Link building can be done also through posting comments to other sites relevant to your niche and topics, sites that have higher page ranks in Google search. You can do this by searching a particular topic in Google. Don't forget to include your website when posting a comment.

7. Monetize your blog - To earn seriously from your blog, apply as a publisher from Google through Google Adsense, the basic requirements are 1.) an active blog, 2.) at least 20 posts, 3.) and at least 6 months old. Once application is submitted, the Adsense team will make a review of your site and will notify you in less than a week if it satisfies the requirements of Google Adsense. Payment is through Western Union. In order to qualify for a paycheck, you must reach the threshold of $100.00. In case your site will not be qualified for a Google Adsense account, try other ads sponsorship companies like Nuffnang and Chitika.I did not earn anything from Nuffnang, chitika is a bit slow, so I stick with my Google Adsense account.

8. Try Pay Per Post - I also earned through pay per post. This is different from Google Adsense. I earned through Blogvertize, once your site is qualified, Blogvertize will send you an email whenever there are topics that suit your blog. It is just a simple task, all you have to do is write and post a topic in your site related to the task given by Blogvertize, payment is within 10 days and they will pay you through Paypal.

9. Affiliate membership - Another way of earning in your blog is through an affiliate membership. Choose a site that related to your blog. For example booking sites if you are a travel blogger. However, most of these sites never actually pay you unless your readers will directly book on the links you provided. You must intensify your promotional effort in this case. Agoda.com, Booking.com, Expedia.com have affiliate programs.

10. Partnership with business establishment. You can earn independently by directly forging a partnership with business establishments through Advertisement campaigns of their products and services in your site. However, most business establishments accept promotional deals  only to sites with high traffic. If this is the case, then you must work hard in building traffic to your site first, create a strong presence online, one way to do this is to build a mailing list of your followers. Invite friends and family to visit your site regularly to boost traffic. Sponsoring an Ad campaign of business establishments in your site is really a very lucrative way to boost your earnings.



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