Writing is a career in which people either make a lot of money or almost none at all. It is nearly impossible to find publishers who are willing to publish, print, and sell your articles. Blogging has changed the difficulties of the past making it easier for anyone who is persistent to start making money with a blog

While in the old days, individuals in the writing profession had to rely on other people to earn; it is much easier today because a writer can easily generate an income by using their skills in business. Hard as it may sound, this endeavor can indeed be an easy-to-achieve possibility with the use of blogs. Surprising, as it may seem, you can indeed be making money with a blog by just whipping up your hidden writing talent.

It doesn’t matter if you have been typing out pages on the Internet for years or just starting out as a bloger. Making money with a blog is something anyone who is willing to put in some effort can do. Here are some few tips that could help you do so:

1. Earn using Google – What was once just a search engine is now among the most powerful enterprises throughout the world, not only in terms of its reach, but also in terms of its income generating possibilities. You can earn from Google by using their free service known as AdSense. All you need to do is have a blog and sell space within your page for ads to be posted by AdSense. The service would then allow you to display ad units – ad boxes – that would display advertisements related to the topics you write about in your blog.

For instance, you wrote about the sweater you just knit, and then the ad unit might display ads about sweaters or knitting. Every time your visitors click on any of these ads, you would get a certain amount. When your earnings reach at least a hundred dollars, Google would then send you a check.

2. Promote Other Profitable Sites- a lot of online businesses offer affiliate programs. By simply posting their ads on your blog this system works. When a visitor clicks the ad and then purchases something from that company, you would then receive a commission or a referral fee. A lot of the bigwigs of Internet shopping run such programs including Amazon.com, LinkShare, and Lands’ End, among many others. The percentages you can earn from their sales vary depending on the company’s policies.

3. Be an Ad Salesman – The downside of Google ads and affiliate programs is you do not really have much control on your earnings and the ads that are displayed on your blog. If you want to play more seriously in the ad selling game, then you can use BlogAds’ free databases where you can set prices for advertisers to post your blog. Some companies look for blogs that match their products and services and rent ad space the way they do with those traditional billboards you find along the freeway. You ad space can then be leased for a certain period of time. All that is required is for you to pay 20 percent to BlogAd.

4. Pass the Hat – While begging may not be so attractive as a means of getting many, doing it in style – online, that is – could be quite appealing, and not to mention profitable. There is nothing wrong about asking for money, and you could indeed make money if you ask nicely or if people like you (and your blog).

Many blogs have donation buttons on them. And true enough, many avid fans and visitors may be willing to share some of their wealth to you as a sign of appreciation for your well-written, compelling, and riveting blog. Donation buttons may be availed from PayPal, the famous escrow service, who would get a little out of your earnings when people do decide to spare some change. Similar options are offered by Amazon (Honor System) and BitPass

5. Start a Gift Shop – if your blog becomes popular enough that hoards of people all over the world visit it everyday. Then you may then profit from selling souvenirs. And the good news is you would not have to press your logo on those T-shirts or coffee mugs, CafePress would do it for you. You can get many things from CafePress such as buttons to very daring things. The selling price is up to you; you just need to pay them the base price of the products.

Making money out of a blog is not as hard as it seems. But of course like in any other moneymaking venture, you have to do your job and do it well. Soon enough your days as a poverty-stricken bard would be over and you could be making money with a blog.

Blogging for money is among the great ways in which you can earn money online. Blogs have grown to be extremely popular nowadays and almost everyone has a blog found on the internet. Through blogs you are able to express your thoughts and feelings about a certain topic, and at the same time you have the place to promote and review certain products and services that help you gain more income. But how can you exactly get money from blogging?

Based on Yahoo Answers, here are the quick, easy, yet effective ways in generating more profit from your blog:

First, you have to set up your own blog. It’s easy to set up one, and a lot of blogging software programs can be found online. You can begin with a free blog (just check if it allows ads), or set up one that needs a domain and web host. The latter is more effective since you get to establish your own space throughout the online community.

Next, you choose the topic that you want to blog on. This topic will serve as your niche that you will follow all throughout, and you will soon be generating content under this niche. If a company hires you to do paid to post services, then you will have to write about their goods and services, either promoting them on your blog or writing reviews about them.

If you don’t want to do this kind of service (although it does pay really well), Yahoo Answers suggests that you choose an ad service. This can be in the form of affiliate marketing or by posting related banner ads on your site. Remember, the advertisements should be related to your blog topic, otherwise you won’t be able to generate good traffic and high income.

You can also incorporate the ads with your paid to post services, as long as they fall under the same niche. Your income would then double since you not only receive payments for your writing services, you also earn commissions from the affiliate programs you have signed in.

After these steps, the next thing you have to do is to introduce your blog to the rest of the internet community. You can do this by joining social media sites, social networks and other places where people gather and discuss things. You can join in the conversations and eventually include your blog in the topics, so that they would be able to check out what you have to offer.

Through social media, you not only make your blog popular, you also increase its traffic. You get to create link building strategies by reaching out to other blogs of the same niche, as well as get to know the real people behind them. From there you can create partnerships which can lead to more money making schemes.

There’s nothing to lose when it comes to blogging for money. All you need is a blog to start with, and you can go ahead with the options to earn. If you like writing then you would like to venture on paid to post services, or just fill your ad spaces with ads. Just don’t forget about the role of social media to help make your blog more popular over the web.

I came across this post “The Top 50 Marketing Blogs To Watch In 2009″ on a site. These are all just blogs, but they made it to the top 50. When you have so many people to follow you why depend on Google adsense, of course they do not. They depend on their own books, [...]

Related posts:

1. An article about Facebook that bloggers & online marketeers must not miss
2. Yaro’s Blog Mastermind System (blogmastermind.com) – a review
3. 20 best gadgets to increase your popularity/ show the worth of your blog
4. 115 Essential things for a best blog to Make Money Online
5. Best 10 paid blog directories

Two weeks ago I re-launched the ProBlogger weekly newsletter. The first email I sent out to subscribers was a story of how I’ve been changing my approach to blogging over the last year. The reaction to the email was huge – literally hundreds of readers responded with emails telling their own stories, asking questions and simply reacting to what I’d written.

I’ve never had that kind of response from a newsletter before – I’m not sure why it happened this time, perhaps it was that it was a story (of sorts), perhaps it was because I shared how about how little I know and that I’m still learning….. or perhaps it was just a day that people felt like reacting.

Whatever it was – it reminded me of the fact that email newsletters can be interactive.

Bloggers with newsletter lists sometimes get trapped into thinking that their blogs are the interactive component in what they do (they have the ability to collect comments after all) and that a newsletter is more of a ‘broadcasting’ tool.

Perhaps there’s some truth in that – email is useful for broadcasting and at their best blogs are great for conversation – but my first email illustrated that email can be interactive too.

Building on the Interaction – with a Survey

I decided to build on the interaction of the first email with a second one that was ALL about interaction. A few days later I sent out an email to my subscribers that simply invited them to participate in a 4 minute survey.

The idea came as I read the reactions to my first email. As I read I realised how little I knew about those who were subscribing to my newsletter and why they subscribed.

I decided to put together a survey to help me do 2 things:

1. Tell me about my subscribers and their blogs – including some basic demographics (age, gender) as well as some about their blogs (how many they have, platforms that they use, topics that they blog on etc
2. Inform me of what people want out of my newsletter – including questions asking subscribers to identify the challenges/problems that they face as well as inviting them to write about what they’d like me to cover in future newsletters.

The survey contained 16 questions which were mainly multiple choice questions that could be completed in 3-4 minutes. There were also options on some questions to write more and two optional open ended questions inviting people to write as much as they wanted.

I created the survey using Survey Monkey.

I sent out the newsletter (unfortunately my timing was terrible as it went out just as Aweber were doing an upgrade so those who got the email in the next few hours were unable to open the survey link – which meant I had to send out an other email…. it was a real mess up) and in the 3-4 days that followed have had 1989 responses from subscribers.

The email went out to about 20,000 people so the response rate has been around 10% – more than I expected considering the mess up with the email and the fact that my list has gone a little cold as I’ve not sent much to my list in a while.

Within an hour or so of people starting to complete the survey I realised it was one of the smartest things I’ve done for a long time. It was producing incredibly useful data in each of the areas identified above.

I’m still working through the responses (the open ended questions are rich with powerful feedback but will take me some time to crunch through) but am already feeling as though I have a much better understanding of:

• who my subscribers are
• why they’re subscribing
• what their needs are
• how I might be able to help them.

I will share some of the results from the survey with subscribers in an upcoming newsletter but one of the bonuses that also came out of the survey is that from the 1000 people who took the extra time to respond to the open ended questions I have literally hundreds of questions and ideas for blog posts. Any time I’m stuck for something to write about in the next year I can just dip into those questions and I’m certain to come up with something to write about.

Take Home Tips

• Whether your blog is big or small – a survey can help you improve your blog on numerous fronts. Even in the first hour after I got results in and only had a handful of responses I was already learning valuable lessons about my readers that would improve my blog. Having lots of responses is great – but even a small number would be useful.
• A survey is a great way to ‘warm up’ your cold newsletter list – I’ve not really sent out too many ProBlogger newsletters for over a year – as a result my list wasn’t overly responsive or feeling connected to me. This survey has really ‘warmed things up’ and already I’ve had a few readers responding with feedback that they feel valued and more connected.
• Ask mainly closed ended questions – think carefully about what you want to find out and try to make the bulk of your questions as easy to answer as checking a box in a multiple answer question. This makes doing your survey quick (respecting the time of those who do it) but it also makes collating your data easier.
• Ask a couple of open ended questions – the multi-choice questions have produced some interesting data for me, but its the open ended ones that have produced the real Gold. I asked one that asked readers for questions or suggestions on what they wanted me to cover and another that simply asked for feedback on any aspect of my site. Both questions have been fantastic and both seem to also have given respondents a chance to feel as though they’ve been heard (and they have been).
• Survey Your Readers and/or Subscribers – in this case I’ve chosen simply to survey those who subscribe to the newsletter of my blog and not all readers and RSS subscribers. I partly did this because I wanted to be informed about how to improve the newsletter but also to help me manage the amount of responses – however valuable information could also be gleaned by surveying everyone or by targeting other specific sub groups within my network. Perhaps for you it makes more sense to survey your readers, your Twitter followers, your facebook fans, those who’ve bought your products etc – really it comes down to your objectives of your survey and how big your network is.

Have you ever run a survey with your blog readers (or some other subset of your readers)? What did you learn? What tips would you add?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Survey Your Readers and Discover Who They Are and How You can Be More Useful to Them

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