How to Make Money Online Blogging

Blogging, or keeping a web log or journal, is a way for many people to talk about themselves, their lives or something that interests them and spread it to the wider world.  Some people blog daily, others do it sporadically, but the main idea behind it was to communicate something to others.  Nowadays, blogging can also do something else for you: make money.  There are a couple of ways to make money blogging and they are all advantageous because the core of your work is doing something you love and something that search engines and other people love.  So, how can you make money blogging?

Research, Research, Write, Write

It is very important to not just write a blog, but write a blog to make money if that’s what you’re aiming for.  Very few bloggers just write anything and become successful, they have to do the legwork.  If you want to blog to make money, make sure to research a niche topic which interests you and build a set of keywords and phrases to target in the search engines, then write your blogs around that.  If you need help pinning these, things like Google WonderWheel can help you as can more specialized keyword targeting programs and software.  Once you’ve done your research, it’s important to do a new blog posting regularly so that you keep your readers and keep the interest of search engines so that you continue ranking.  Remember-the higher you rank in search engines, the more likely it is you’ll get visitors which makes it more likely you’ll make money.

Rent out Advertising Space

Once your blog is fairly established, you can put advertisements up and get money every time they are clicked by visitors.  The traditional way to do this is through Google AdSense, which is a free service to use that allows bloggers and site owners to connect with other advertisers.  You can also scout out individual businesses and post banner ads for them and get a commission price for every visitor who clicks and buys something from the affiliate site.  These things are free to sign up for and many sites give anywhere between 10-40% commission and sometimes more.

Your blog will have to have a lot of traffic before you make any appreciable amount of money and you may need several of them in order to really live off of the income, but it can make you some good start up money for other sites or just some pocket money.  Advertising space is one of the easiest ways to make money blogging; it’s fully automated and the money just builds up.

Use Your Blog to Launch Your Products

Many savvy internet marketers keep a blog on hand, either written by themselves or managed by another writer.  This gives them a platform from which to talk about products they’re selling.  This is particularly useful for those in multi-level marketing or ‘pyramid’ schemes.  You are selling another person’s product so you maintain a blog detailing how wonderful that product has been to your life.  Blogs can be made more personal which is more popular with readers and you have more control over your tone and writing style than if you were doing a flat out business website.  However, you can also do a blog for your own products, particularly if you don’t know how to build a site of your own and so just use a blogging platform to advertise your goods and services.

It is possible to make money blogging as long as you do your research carefully, write regularly and with good content, and choose something you enjoy doing.  There are many professional bloggers out there and they are moderately successful at it, so it is possible!  Do the legwork you need to do and choose an area to write in and you too can make money blogging!

 

Best Website Hosting Companies

If you are going to start working online, chances are that you will want to have at least one website at least once and that means you’ll have to work with a web hosting company.  There are scads of web hosting companies out there, but their main function is to help website owners maintain a spot on the web, with additional benefits, variable to the company. You have to pay an annual fee for your website and this fee varies a little from company to company (and depending on what kinds of perks you want), but these fees tend to be very low and highly affordable.  With so many different companies out there, what are the best website hosting companies to check out?

Inmotion

Inmotion is top of the ranks in a few independent review sites for being one of the best web hosting companies..  This web hosting company offers a free domain name, data centers and high notch tech support as well as web hosting and a pile of other features necessary for any small to large business looking to go into the world of the internet.

Price: $5.95-$13.95 per month, depending on which package you go for.

Webhostinghub

Web Hosting Hub is the second in the ranks, mostly because it doesn’t have quite as good tech support, but is more affordable.  You also get a free domain name, data centers, free transfer from one hosting company to Hub, free web stats and other benefits.  It’s ideal for tiny businesses because it’s so cheap, though larger businesses will also find it helpful.  This is one of the best web hosting companies for price though; it’s incredibly cheap for what you’re getting.

 

Price: $3.95 a month

iPage

iPage is your basic web hosting company, but with one difference: it’s powered by wind energy!  This is the only web hosting company that is high in the rankings for being a solid company and is run by completely green energy.  iPage offers free domain name, complete security, design suite, tech support, marketing packages, and plenty of other tools and treats to help get your website off the ground.

Price: $2.95/month

HostGator

HostGator is one of the most well known and best web hosting companies around because it is solid, reliable, affordable, and has plenty of features for a range of website owners.  You can get a pile of website templates to play with, plenty of support and help, free domain name, unlimited bandwidth, free shopping cart and forum software and plenty of other perks.  And an alligator-let’s not forget the alligator, shall we?

Price: $3.71/month

Bluehost

Bluehost is a very professional webhosting company, catering to businesses, though anyone can hop on board.  This webhost offers unlimited domain hosting, 99.9% uptime, unlimited e-mail accounts, free domain, unlimited GB transfers and other benefits for anyone looking to build a good website and host it.  Bluehost has a professional reputation and has hosted a ton of websites with more coming every day.

Price: $5.95/month

Of course, these are just some of the webhosting companies out there competing for business; there are plenty more to choose from.  These ones are all great ones to start with though because of low prices, high numbers of features and lots of support and help for your website, so if you’re looking for the best website hosting companies, these should be at the top of the list to check out.

 

Tim Ferris: The 4 Hour Work Week Review

The Four Hour Work Week is a partial autobiographical, mostly self-help book by Tim Ferris, detailing ways to create a ‘four hour work week’ by being an online entrepreneur.  The book has garnered rave reviews from some editors and mixed reviews from readers, so let’s take a look shall we?  What is Tim Ferris: The 4 Hour Work Week all about?

Tim Ferris is first and foremost, an online businessman, specializing in-you guessed it!-product selling.  He claims to have the knowledge that allows you to ultimately make up to 40K a week with only about 4 hours of work a week.  Sounds too good to be true…?

So, What’s the DEAL?

Tim Ferris’ system basically breaks down into DEAL:

Definition: Define what you want in life (Basically, write down your goals) and what you want and need to do to get there.  Build yourself a roadmap to success, a list of goals, a bucket list, whatever you want.

Elimination: Stop wasting your time with surfing the ‘net, checking your phone, writing e-mails, and the myriad of other distractions which plague so many newcomer entrepreneurs and contributes to their failure.

Automation: Learn how to outsource most of your hum-drum activities to virtual assistants for as cheap as possible.  This way, you can have someone else manage things like writing e-mails, taking phone calls and making appointments for you and whatever else would distract you from building your online business.

Liberation: Outsource everything you can and take more mini-vacations.  Eventually, quit your job altogether.  You shouldn’t need it anymore by this point anyway!

Does this all sound way to good too be true?

Many users have been very happy with this system; they were able to follow the steps, build online businesses and live fairly comfortable lives, free from their job.  Others take parts of the information found here and apply it well while still mixing in their own spin.  The information found in this book is largely general enough to apply to anyone at least in part, so there is something for everyone.

Still others though have been suspicious.  The idea of only spending four hours a week working sounds good, but the fact is that at least in the beginning, you will be logging in a lot more than four hours a week on your business and if you have several businesses rotating around as most successful entrepreneurs do, you will generally be working more than four hours a week.  It’ll be less than forty, but more than four.  Still others don’t want to outsource everything; they may not trust someone across the ocean with their personal information, they may have been burned by bad freelancers before, they may like some aspects of the work to do it themselves.  Finally, many people had problems with the ethics in the book and the idea of outsourcing everything on the principle that if everyone did that, nothing would get done.  (I guess there’s always mooks who’d rather work than lounge around).

Is This Book Worth It?!

Surprisingly, yes, despite the nay-sayers.  This book does contain some gems of wisdom, including where you can outsource successfully and how and why, some good ideas on how to market your particular product and plenty of motivation for you.  If you don’t mind using legal-but-grey-ethical-practices, this book has plenty of tips and tricks for you and by working through the steps and putting in the effort at the beginning, mixed with a good dose of luck, you too can have a four hour work week (or nearly).

This book seems to be best used though in conjunction with your own ideas and ethics in the online business world.  Not everyone is going to want (or need) a virtual assistant, not everyone will want to outsource their writing, coding and graphic work, and not everyone will want to do things like re-branding their product or throwing fake E-bay auctions for market research.  But everyone can take a boost of motivation (or laughter) from his life story and common sense ideas like eliminating the distractions in your life and defining what you want in life and work is always a good thing.

The Four Hour Work Week is yet another book detailing ways to be successful in making money online.  It has its humorous spots and has plenty of tips and tricks to minimize the amount of time you actually spend working.  Whether or not you actually have a four hour work week is largely up to luck and how much work you want to do yourself; much like the rest of the book, your best bet is to pick the things that seem like they’d work for you and leave the rest behind.

Worth the price?  Maybe, but you could take it out of the library too and save your money.  After all, one of the keys to any successful business online and off is spend little, make lots and that is one of the themes in this book too.  Pick it up for yourself if you’re interested in basic techniques for building online businesses or you just want to add some tweaks to your usual methods to make money online.