How to Start a Blog and Get That Blog Making Money For You!

"So how do I GET STARTED blogging for money?"

"Can you please tell me where to go... what to do... how to get started...."

I hear these questions all the time and because I am a niche blogger myself, I simply do not have the time to help everyone! (I make my money with affiliate marketing so I have to add posts to my blogs,too...:)

But maybe what I CAN do is set up a few short and simple steps here to help you get started blogging... believe me, once you get started, you will never stop learning.

The hardest part for many people is to simply to get started blogging. It was not that long ago that the mere thought of blogging gave me a headache, not to mention seo and keywords and all that stuff... I am not kidding!

So here is what I would advise you to do....

Step #1) Go to clickbank.com and register - it's free - once you have done that you are able to browse the marketplace and see what they offer as affiliate products to market. Most of the clickbank products are e-products so you want to be careful. If it looks cheesy to you, then stay away from it!

Step#2) Also go to a few other affiliate programs like linkshare.com, amazon.com, commission junction and regsiter with each one, it is free as well , do so and browse their categories.
(some of these require you to have some sort of website or blog set up already... just wait on those till later...)

Step#3) Now go to blogger.com or wordpress.com and set up a simple blog - let's say you are wanting to promote the program 'six pack abs' that you can find on clickbank - you will want to have your blog name something related to 'six pack abs' and you may have to play around with it till you find one that is available...

(use the keyword search tool at http://www.seobook.com/ - it's a free tool)

Then you start posting about six pack abs on your blog - linking back to the ad page with the link provided to you from clickbank - it is called a hoplink and should look something like http://xxxxx.truthaboutabs.hop.clickbank.net/ except the xxx's will be your own tracking link.

Remember - the more posts you have on your blog, the more exposure you get on google search - BUT be patient, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks for google searchers to find you....

Okay - in a nutshell - that is how to get started and I will post more soon.... :)

How to Make Money Blogging About Things We Do Already!

So... here we are with a blog all set up and no idea how to go about making money with a blog...

(First of all, there are many amazing and wonderful tools to help shorten the learning curve for you to get into profit more quickly with building a blog, and I have several of my personal favorites scattered around on my blog here.)

But is a few short words, making money with a blog is simply by looking at it as a 'showcase' or storefront in a way, as you know how in real life, outside the walls of the internet, if you want to buy shoes, you will go to a shoestore - or if you want pastries, you would hardly go into a pet shop...

Same way online... people are searching online for stuff, every seciond of every day.... if you are blogging about pets, then you will want the links on your site to go to pet items.

It would be silly to write an article about your Aunt Bonnies amazing pumpkin desert on your blog about pets - not only silly but actually the search engines will look at that and because nothing really matches up, they will pass over it whereas if everything is related to pets, and someone googles something like 'allergy pet skin care' and you have a blog post about something related to 'allergies and skin care' you just might get that traffic which can turn into a customer for you if your blog is related to what they are actually searching for.

I have seen blogs that have everything but the kitchen sink on them and then they wonder why they do not get traffic from the search engines!

Here is a simple tip that will get you more targeted traffic in a matter of days:

Write a post on your blog every day for a week - and keep it all very similar, and yet have it be fresh new content - for instance, let's use the pet care one since we seem to be on that subject!

One day, you write a blog post about 'pet skin care' - the next day it could be ' allergy free pet skin care' and the day following, you might do one that says ' sensitive pet skin care', etc, etc, and ping your blog each time you add a post.... if you have never pinged your blogs - go to pinggoat.com and follow the steps there - it is easy and free to register for it.

You should notice an increase in traffic very quickly with that one little trick... go one step further and write a brief article using the same keywords and link back to your blog with them - submit your articles to places like ideamarketers.com , goarticles.com and ezinearticles.com ...