How to Start a Blog and Make Money from It How to Start a Blog and Make Money from It 10 Steps on How to Build a Profitable Blog by Gil Tenorio of Learn Financial Education Blog 2012.Copyright by Learn Financial Education. All Rights Reserved. i
How to Start a Blog and Make Money from It 10 Steps on How to Build a Profitable Blog by Gil Tenorio of Learn Financial Education The information written in this ebook is for informational purposes only. I am not in anyway related or connected to the companies mentioned in this book. However, some of the links are affiliate links, meaning, if you buy the product through that link, I will earn some commission. No part of this ebook shall be reproduced, copied, or sold in whole or in part in any form, without the prior written consent of the author. All trademarks and registered trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective owners. Lastly, I do not guarantee that you will earn money when you start a blog. It depends on many factors and you should do your own due diligence before buying products mentioned in this ebook. I do only recommend products and services I personally used. 2012.Copyright by Learn Financial Education. All Rights Reserved. ii
Table of Contents (click the content) Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------1 10 Steps on How to Build a Profitable Blog--------------------------- 2 Choose a Profitable Niche----------------------------------------------- 3 Think of a good domain name related to your niche----------------- 4 Buy a domain name and web hosting----------------------------------5 Setup your blog to WordPress platform-------------------------------7 Research for highly searched keywords related to your niche------8 Write articles related to your keywords-------------------------------9 Optimized your pages and articles-------------------------------------10 Drive traffic to your blog------------------------------------------------11 Monetize your site with Google AdSense and other affiliate sites--13 Continue to posts more articles----------------------------------------14 Final Note from Gil ------------------------------------------------------15 Contact Info--------------------------------------------------------------16 iii
Dedication I would like to dedicate this simple ebook to my son Gideon and my wife, Myleen. You are my source of inspiration and joy. I love you very much! Acknowledgement This ebook will not be possible to be published without the wisdom from our Lord Jesus Christ. I also would like to give thanks to my parents, Basilio and Levy Tenorio, who guide and help me to be the person what I am now. Special thanks also to the blog of Shaun Connell who I stumbled upon during the early days of my blogging venture. Your blog helps me a lot. iv
INTRODUCTION Make money online is one of the most searched words in the Internet these days because many people are looking for ways on how to earn extra money apart from the job they have. Basically, there is much information you can get from the Internet on how to start your journey on how to make money online. by the blogger. The blog word comes from the combination of web and log. I have been blogging for more than 2 years now. I started to make my own self-hosted blog in April 2010. My first blog is about personal finance. Prior to that blog, I have created several blogs in WordPress and Blogspot. However, I m not satisfied with those blogs because of several limitations. Anyway, if you love reading, definitely you will have a greater chance to succeed in blogging. Even if you re not good in writing, you can still blog. I m one example of that. Blogging is one sure and proven way to make money online. A blog is a website that is usually updated regularly I m not really a good writer. However, it didn t stop me to blog because I want to help other people through the blogs I m writing. 1
It is true that you can make money from blog. But, it should not be your first motivation why you want to make a blog because the money will not come easily. You need to work hard to earn your first dollar. Blogging is not a rocket science that you will make money overnight. It may take several months or years before you earn decent amount of money. There is lots of information out there about how to start a website or blog and they require you to pay a big amount of money. Don't be hooked up to these sites, most of this information you can get it for free in the Internet. Actually, I listed here the important things you all need on how to start a blog. Read on to see the list below to give you an idea of what I m talking about. 10 STEPS ON HOW TO BUILD A BLOG A blog is not meant only to make money. First and foremost, your aim in starting a blog is to share your knowledge and help other people along the way. As you continue this goal, more and more people will come to your blog because they find it helpful and a solution to their queries and problems. As your blog s traffic increase in time, it will give you a good chance to make money from placing ads like Google 2
AdSense and other affiliate sites such as Amazon and ClickBank. So let s get started on how to start your own blog and afterwards, make money from it. Here are the 10 steps you should take. 1. Choose a profitable niche A niche is what your blog is all about. For example, the niche of my first blog is personal finance. My blog s name is Learn Financial Education. You can blog anything you like and what interested you the most. Some niches or topics are more profitable than other niches simply because more people are searching for those topics. For example, if you blog about earthworms, only few people maybe searching for that topic and hence less traffic for your blog. Lesser traffic to your blog means lower earning. Therefore, it is very important to think what niche you should start. I would suggest you start in the things you know or the topic related to your job. For example, if you re an accountant, you can start a blog about banking and economy-related niche. It is easier to start in what you already know. When choosing for a profitable niche, you need to learn what people want and look in search engines like Google and Yahoo. Theses search engines are the two good sources of traffic to your blog so you should write topics that can be seen in these search engines. Many people are searching for topics related on how to make money 3
online, finance, investing, new gadgets, latest technology, news, music, photography, travel, business and movies. Thus, I recommend you consider these niches if you don't have any in mind. It must be also your interest and you re a bit knowledgeable about it. Your domain name is very important. Think of a domain name that can be easily remembered. As much as possible, it should be short as possible and don't use special characters in your domain name like hyphen, ampersand and others. Only use letters as much as possible. Visit my post on how to choose a niche for your own blog: Choosing Your Niche 2. Think of a good domain name related to your niche A domain name is the name of the blog or website you type in the address bar of web browsers. A good example of domain name is www.facebook.com. The dot com domain is the most popular and easy to remember so I suggest using it when registering your domain name. As an example, your blog should have this domain name: www.yourblogname.com 4
However, if you cannot find the exact.com name, you can try the.net or.org domain. As an example, www.yourblogname.net or www.yourblogname.org cost around $10-15. My recommendation is NameCheap and GoDaddy. However, I would suggest buying both (domain name+ web hosting) as a package because it is cheaper than buying it separately. 3. Buy a domain name and web hosting Domain name is the address site of your website or blog, for example, www.google.com. Web hosting is where your website or blog is located or housed. You need both to start your blog and make it accessible via the Internet. You may buy both at the same time or separately. You can register a domain name without buying a web hosting. Normally, it will There are many cheap web hosting companies that offer both domain registration and web hosting at the same time. I am using Just Host as my domain name registration and web hosting company. Just Host has one of the cheapest prices for hosting and domain registration. Tip: If you want a particular domain name and it is still available (no one has registered for it), you should immediately buy it because someone can register for that domain in the future. 5
When I started my first blog, the cost of free domain name registration plus web hosting for two years is USD $77. This is a lot cheaper than any other web hosting companies out there such as Host Gator and Blue Host. I personally used Just Host for all of my blogs and it has a superb customer service support. The software they are using called cpanel (short for Control Panel) is also user-friendly. I have easily set up my blog in just few minutes. If you don t know any web hosting, you can consider Just Host because they have one of the cheapest prices for web hosting with free domain. If you want to pay on a monthly basis, you will just pay as low as $3.45 per month. You can lower that price if you will get a 2 or 3- year plan for your web hosting services plus you get a free domain. However, if you don t have a credit card or PayPal account at the moment and you also don t want to pay for domain and web hosting, you can register your domain name and hosted it for free by Blogspot and WordPress. However, your domain name is long with the blogspot.com or wordpress.com. If you are really serious to start your own blog and want to make money online, you should buy your own domain name without the WordPress.com or 6
BlogSpot.com. Your blog will look more professional and more manageable if you have your own domain name and selfhosted by Just Host. You can see my video tutorial here on how to buy a domain name and web hosting at Just Host to help you out when you finally consider starting your own blog. I have created a blog post regarding some tips on how to register a domain name and how to buy a web hosting, you can see it below. software today. It has many features you can easily use for building your own blog. WordPress provides plenty of plug-ins that can help you to set up your blog or website easily. A plug-in is very similar to a Smartphone application which you can use to make certain activities easier. Tips on Buying a Domain Name and Web Hosting 4. Setup your blog to WordPress platform WordPress (WP) is the most popular blogging platform and website-builder If you are newbie in blogging, WordPress should be definitely your starting point. Using WP, you can choose different blog s theme and create the overall appearance of your website. 7
If you don't know HTML code or computer programming, WP is the best platform you ll ever need because it requires no HTML editing or any complicated code. For more details about WP, you can visit their website here. 5. Research for highly searched keywords related to your niche What is keyword? Keywords are the words usually search by people when using search engines like Google and Yahoo. Keyword is very important for the overall success of your blog. As much as possible, when you write a topic for your blog, you should use these keywords so that there will be a higher chance that your post will be seen in the search results of major search engines. However, in the beginning of your blog, you can write anything you want so you ll be more confident about what you write. You can focus on keyword research at the latter part when you have already master how to write a good post. Let s go back to keyword topic. There are many tools that you can use to find good keywords for your post. First, you can use the free tools which I am also using, the Google Keyword Tool. It is very easy to use and you are sure that the results are accurate since it is the product of Google. You can try it by going here. 8
people. For example, make money online is the common keyword. The long tail keyword can be how to make money online in your home. With Google Keyword Tool, you can find many good keywords related to your post. You can also learn the number of searches per month for that keywords and how much advertisers pay for that keyword when they use Google Adwords. It is very important that your keywords are related to your topic. However, don't just focus on keywords; your article should also be informative, easy-tounderstand and readable by your readers. Currently, I m using Keyword Researcher for finding long tail keywords which is consist of long words searched by most 6. Write articles related to your keywords and important pages of your blog What makes a blog different form other website is that it is updated regularly by posting articles related to the niche of the blog. An article is like an essay or story where you write information, facts or your experience about a particular topic. Normally, you must write a 500-word article related to your niche or keyword that you want. Make sure that you don't use many times your keywords; the 9
recommended amount is less than 3% of the total words of your article. Make your post informative, high quality and easy to understand by your visitors and readers. It should be unique and not copied from anywhere else. You should not plagiarize, be different. Check spellings and grammars for any errors before publishing your article. Break sentences into paragraphs so that it will be easier to read. As much as possible, always write at least 500 to 600-word article. Before publishing your article, do proofreading to correct any wrong grammar and spellings. In addition, you also need to write pages for your about page, contact info, privacy policy and disclaimer. Check out my blog to give you more idea. 7. Optimized your pages and articles What is optimization? It is a process of improving your article so that it can be picked up by search engines and includes it in their search results. Actually, the word should be SEO or search engine optimization. However, for this time, your focus should be first on your post and how to make it high quality. WordPress has many plugins for article optimization. These plugins can be used to improve the visibility of your post from the eye of search engines. You may also need to change the title tags, add Meta description, add keywords and add tags to your articles. I have published a post about the top 10 WordPress plugins your blog must have 10
so that it will be well-optimized. Please see the post here. The goal here is to make your article unique, helpful and high quality so that search engines will love it. 8. Drive traffic to your blog Traffic means the people visiting your blog. Without traffic, your blog will be useless even if you have the best articles that can solve the problems and questions of the people. I think this step is the hardest part to do base on my experience and other bloggers as well. A blog is worthless if there are no people visiting it so it is very important that your site will be seen by as many people it should be. You cannot get visitors automatically when you post an article; you need to make it known to the Internet that your blog exists and you have the great articles for people s questions and queries. You can drive visitors to your blog by many different ways. You can post your articles on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest and other social bookmarking and networking site. 11
In my opinion, social networking site (SNS) is the easiest way to drive traffic to your site. Therefore, you should start making your blog s page in Facebook and Twitter. Another way to get traffic is commenting on other blogs with high traffic with a link pointing to your site. When making comments, it should be related to the topic of the post so that you will not be tagged as a spammer. Don t put any links on your comment. The link should be on your name or your blog s name. As an example, I m using this name when commenting to other blogs in my niche: Gil@LearnFinancialEducation By doing this, you are telling the owner of the blog that you are a real person and an owner of that blog. This strategy will make your comment reliable and not a spam. Lastly, the best way to drive traffic to your site is by getting your site on Google's first search page for your keywords. This thing is the best traffic you can ever have. But I tell you straight: it is very hard to do it and many bloggers are paying big amount of money to be able to be seen in the first page of Google. As a newbie blogger, I would recommend just focus on writing the best article that can be helpful to other people plus be active on social networking sites and commenting to other blogs in your niche. Get many back links as many as possible because it will be one factor to rank high in Google search. Links can be obtained 12
from comments, SNS, guest posting, and blog carnivals. 9. Monetize your site with Google AdSense and other affiliate sites Before monetizing your blog, it should have a decent quantity of post and visitors. My suggestion is your blog should have at least 30 posts and an average of 100 visitors per day. As much as possible, do your blog posting regular, perhaps at least 3 articles each week. As I said before, write at least 500-word articles, not short and not a long one. Going back to monetization topic, there are several ways to monetize your blog. The easiest way could be using Google AdSense. It is the most popular and used monetization method by almost all webmasters and blogger one point in their blog s existence. First of all, you need to apply for an account before you can put AdSense code into your blog. It may take several days or weeks of processing and approval. In my experience, it takes 2-3 days to get a notice from Google about approval or denial of my application. Another alternative is Infolinks. It is inline text advertising that perhaps you notice when you have visited some blogs or websites. 13
The application for Infolinks is easier than AdSense and their requirements are not stricter. However, in my experience, Google AdSense still gives the higher earnings than any other advertising site. In addition, you can also apply for Amazon affiliate account which you can use to sell books, mp3 or gadget depending on your niche. I think Amazon affiliate works best for blogs related to gadgets, tools, music, home appliances and book reviews. There s also Chitika. This company is much similar to Adsense but fewer advertising companies in their list so earnings from Chitika are also lower compared with AdSense. That s just the major companies you can used to monetize your blog. Some blogs are offering private or direct advertising which I think the best way to go especially if you have many visitors. As of this writing, I have earned a total of more than $8,500 in AdSense and more than $500 through private advertising. You can see my YouTube video here about my proof of Google AdSense income. 10. Continue posting more articles Your blog is a blog because it is continuously updated by posting articles on a regular basis. I would recommend to you to post at least 3 articles in your blog every week so your blog will look fresh 14
from the eyes of your visitor and search engines. Search engines do really like blogs that are active and regularly updated. The more articles you write in your blog, the greater the chance search engines can pick your post and include it in their search results. Therefore, in order to increase your blog s traffic each passing day, the secret will be to post more articles. That s it! Final Note Thank you very much for downloading this ebook! I wish you learned the basic information on how to start your own profitable blog. Many people who started a blog don t continue because of the hardships they encountered along the way. Blogging is not easy but it is rewarding plus an opportunity to earn money. If you are planning to make money online by blogging, you should be patient and resourceful. Blogging needs a certain amount of your time and money particularly in the early stage of your blog. It is not a get-rich-quick activity or a rocket science. It is also better to blog on the things you really like and the things interested you the most so that you have the eagerness to post more articles. You can use all available monetization as long as it will not look like an advertisement website. 15
Don t be overwhelmed by the much information and the load of having a blog. As long as you enjoy it and many people are finding it useful, your blog will be in a good shape. You may also follow me in social networking sites to keep you updated. Thanks! I would suggest finding a mentor or blogger friends online. In this way, you can ask them if you have questions about blogging. I am willing to help you out so you could start your own blog for personal or business purposes. You can see my post here for more details. Contact Info If you have questions about blogging and how to make money online, visit my blog at Learn Financial Education or you can send me a message through my email: kumitakaonline@gmail.com 16