Dummies Guide to Blogging and Blogging for Money

You are not an idiot at all. The fact that you are reading this hub makes you one smart human being who can race with time and technological advancement. Sometimes, I feel like an idiot searching the web for information, just to realize that they are irrelevant. So here I make sure you don't feel like an idiot. You get what you are looking for here and I am satisfied as the author of this hub. Okay with that? Let's move on.....

If you are not a member with hub pages but have been following my hubs on making income online, the good news is you can start right here right now. You can sign up with hub pages and earn passive income. I have signed up six months ago and through trial and error with hub pages and six months of tireless researches on hub pages, now I can sit back and watch my Google Absence earning grow from dollar to dollar every morning I log into my Hub page account. Exciting huh!

Writing online has its many advantages. Earning passive revenue, putting extra cash into the pocket and being compensated monetarily for your time and effort are few of the many benefits you can gain by writing online for income. Good news is, there are countless sites that allow you to realize your dream of earning online.

Blogging is life in general, whether it be what you do, what someone else does, or what we do. Blogging is an art form in itself because you capture so much. It's a form of communication, like the newspaper, but you're your own editor!

Don't get me wrong, blogging is not all about making money. It is also about being social. Here is a nice little acronym on blog that will help you to remember what blogging is all about.

B-Befriend-Get to know people. Make friends.If no one reads your blog it's just internet litter clogging up the cyber highway.

L-Learn. Don't think you know everything because you don't. Want your blog to succeed you have to learn.

O-Officious. Be an official, an authority in your chosen niche. Build up credibility. This will take time, but if you have the patience it will pay off.

G-Give. Blogging and social networking is all about giving rather than taking.

You can blog for yourself or blog for others. Either way, if you follow the simple steps outlined in this hub, you can make some descent dollars online, if that is what you really desire. If you don’t have a blog and wish to know how to create a blog, I have written a hub on how you can create a blog and even integrate e-commerce solutions into your website to monetize your blog.

Click: What is Ecommerce-How to Build Your Own Ecommerce Site.

If you already have a blog and wish to know where to find freelance writing jobs, how to write quality and well paid articles, click the links given and read my hubs on writing for income online here.

Links

Seven ways to write for money

How to make money as a freelance writer

Income Earning Opportunity: Simply Write & Earn Online with Hub pages

Extra Pocket Money - 8 Simple Ways for Average Papua New Guineans

Fastest way to make money online - Writing for Broker Sites

To create a blog is as easy as ABC. Experts with HTML codes can go ahead and create their own blog from scratches. If you are like me, just go for the free blog hosting sites like Word press and or Blogger. Both are absolutely free and you will get your blog up and running in no time. Both have options for upgrading your blog if you have enough money to spend.

Let us assume you want to create a blog showcasing Dating tips. Having only dating tips as your blog title is too broad and your blog can be buried million feet underground in the search engines. Be specific with your title. After your research, let’s say you come up with the blog title, Tips for dating Polynesian girls. There you are. You can now write everything under the sky about dating Polynesian girls. This is just an example. Updating your blog daily or weekly is blogging if for some reason you didn’t understand the definition given earlier.

Before you blindly go into creating blog later to find out that you run out of ideas to blog which is so discouraging and depressing, sit down and plan your blog. Do your own online research. What are hot search topics? Use Google Key word tool to determine the monthly global searches. You will find that most hot topics have very high competition. You don’t want to be just another statistics buried deep down in the sea million articles in search engines.

Once you have your blog up and running, you employ search engine optimization techniques or SEO in short to rank higher in search engines. Use of SEO techniques is the naturally way and if used efficiently can get you flying high above search engines. The higher in search engine you rank, the more readerships you can get and that’s more income for you. Traffic you get from using this technique is called organic traffic.

Google ad word tool is a very useful SEO tool to you can use to find keywords or key phrases, people are looking for. In other words, these are the words or phrases web users frequently type in search engines. Search engine also use these words to index articles. Therefore if you use these words or phrases, there is possibility that your article can be indexed by search engine spiders or robots.

If these sounds too complicated, choose a topic you love, say cooking, traveling, biking etc. and write many articles or blog posts about that topic. Google or other search engines will see each blog post you post as one page. This gives you a better chance to rank higher in search engines. Why? Because search engines recon you are an authority in that subject and will index your articles soon.

One you have your blog fully functional and have published several articles in your blog, you can apply for earning programs like Google Ad Sense or Chitika. Upon approval, you can just cut and paste their HTML code into your blog and start earning when readers click on those ads. More clicks you have, more you earn.

I always love this old adage “Failing to plan is planning to fail. So plan ahead to avoid disappointments.

Tip # 1. Find target keywords using tools like: Google ad word, Google Trend or Google Insight. Hotly searched keywords can be sources from Yahoo buzz, Google hot searchers, and AOL hot searches.

If you are very serious in making money like me, you can buy keywords from site like Keyword academy. The keyword gurus, Court Tuttle and Mark Butler, do a very good job for you, analyzing the best performing keywords you can buy and use it in your articles. Believe it or not, they have a 30 day free trial and after that if you are satisfied with their service you can become a member for $29 for a month or $39 as a premium member also for a month.

Tip # 2. Think about the audience you want to target. What type of people do you want to be interested and reading your blog posts? Those looking for love and dating tips, food, flower, technology lovers and you can think of the rest.

Tip # 3. What is the main focus? Do you want to sell a product or service in your blog?

Tip # 4. Make your blog creative and catchy. I would be bored to visit a blog that is filled with affiliate ads rather than well-researched rich contents.

Tip # 5. Make your blog interactive so as to keep the drive more traffic to your site.

The other way is to blog for others. Some people have hundreds, yes hundreds of different blogs!Others make full websites with lots of information in them, like reviews. For example you can have a website that compares all the different boats, or phones, toys, the list is endless. These websites or blogs need hundreds of reviews.There is no way these people can even begin to write all the articles they need! Since they own their own websites they don't want to share their ad income. So instead they pay writers a set amount per article or review.

You can make use of that opportunity to write for income. The blog owners of webmasters will give you the necessary requirements like number of words, should you include photos, videos or even how to structure your article. Some just give you a topic and tell you to develop an article in so many words.

Ghost blogging is another form of ghost writing. Many ask if it is beneficial to do ghost blogging.Like anything else, blogging has good and bad side of it. For your benefit I briefly list few advantages and disadvantages of ghost blogging. You may include your own.

SEO Effect-You can write about a niche and build a brand for yourself, which can have positive impact of your search engine rankings

Promotional effect-The blog may contain useful information that can promote your business and industry.

Credibility effect-You build your credibility in the overtime and become an authority in a niche

Training effect-The more you do ghost blogging, the better you train yourself how to write high quality web contents

The pay rate can depend on the website you get your job, the difficulty of work, number of words typed, the subject matter and the level of grammatical mastery. In general, payment can range between $1 - $5 for every 100 to 150 words and anywhere from $50 t0 $125 for every 2000 to 2500 words. Some of these rates are negotiable depending on the degree of relationship with your client.

• You didn’t own the article once you submit – Yes! This is the sad story of it, you are not the owner of your article nor any credit for your job.
• Received Less Pay – Once you are hired as a ghost writer you will receive less pay than the one who hired you.
• Deadline is ASAP – ghost writing is not so easy job, as your deadline is always ASAP. As the blogger who hire you will also need to review your article before they will post and submit it to their client.

Ghost blogging means more than just writing web contents. Successful ghost bloggers establish genuine relationship with the blog owners. It requires substantial ongoing time commitment on the part of the ghost blogger. On your end, you have to know the quality of your articles and charge accordingly. No point in getting everything the webmasters throws to you. It’s not only him available online for you to write for income. If he doesn’t give you the respect your require, back off and look for greener pasture elsewhere. Now the question is where you find those blogs and sites that offer writing jobs.

Most of these sites allow writers to sell their work or clients to advertise their jobs. There all awful lot of freelance writing jobs you can source from these sites. Ghost blogging is just one out of many jobs you can source from the following listed sites. Most of these sites are free to join but you must register as member before you will be allowed to participate. Payments may vary from site to site. My best advice is for you to research the sites first before you either join just walked away, without even realizing the benefits of these sites.

Here is my list. Check them out.

• Text broker
• Demand studios
• ODesk
• Elance
• Ghost blogger

Problogger.com

Copyblogger.com

Earning passive revenue, putting extra cash into the pocket and being compensated monetarily for your time and effort are few of the many benefits you can gain by writing online for income. One effective way to do it is though blogging, ether for yourself or for others as a ghost blogger. There is more to ghost blogging that just writing and we have just discovered in this hub. Careful research has ensured relevant links provide as reference for further reading. Read more and never stop learning as I always say.

Bookmark the hub for future reading or share it with your friends if you found the hub useful. Finally, don’t forget to drop your comment in the comments section below and vote up the hub if you found it useful. Maybe you wanted to complete reading the hub before you sign up for hub pages. Here is your chance.