How To Start A Money Making Blog

For you to have landed in this page, I assume you either own a blog but not making money out of it or you wish to start a blog and earn from it. I also assume you know what a blog is? YOU DON’T? The name BLOG was coined from WEB LOG and is according to Wikipedia a discussion or informational site published on the World Wide Web and consist of discrete entries (“posts”) typically displaced in reverse chronological order. Don’t be confused; simply put a BLOG is a type of website that is updated frequently with latest news or information. Anyone can own a blog site and start posting the same day. Many bloggers are monetizing their blog site for profit. Bloggers who are passionate about any topic they blog about tend to excel more in the blogging business. A blog can be hosted for free with an open source tool like WordPress, Blogger, Orble, etc but of course this free method of blogging is not easily monetized.
I will be sharing with us how to start a money making blog ie how to make a blog and how to position it for profiting.

WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT
If you must be successful as a blogger, you must have passion for what you are blogging about, you must be skilled in the area you are writing about, be consistent in posting new articles, be ready to give out quality and unique information and finally, you must be ready to engage your audience and win their trust. “TRUST GENERATES MONEY ONLINE”.
CHOOSING A BLOG PLATFORM AND HOSTING
There are a whole lot of platforms that one can run a blog in but the most used are WordPress and Blogger. WordPress to me is the best in terms of profitability, design and SEO. You can download and install latest WordPress platform direct from your host like FatCow after setting up your domain. Fatcow is a cheap, reliable and customer friendly host and domain company.
To start a money making blog that is for  professional purpose, you must have your own unique domain (www.your-domain.com) and a host for it. You can get a domain name for less than $10 per year and a good host for around $5 per month depending on the host. I register all my domains with Namecheap OR FatCow and use FatCow as my host for all my blogs and they have never failed and have good customer care that will attend to you 24/7.
PLEASE NOTE: When choosing domain, it is advised to choose something related to what you are writing about. For example, if you want to write about HIV treatment, your domain should look like this (*www.hivcure.com or www.treathiv.com). This is so when people see your domain in a search report, they will have an idea of the content of your blog. It will also help your sites ranking in search reports.

MONETIZING YOUR BLOG
When I was in the university, there is this saying I and my friends use a lot when we approach the school gate; “WHERE PEOPLE ARE, THERE IS MONEY”. We say that because, my school is located in a remote village with little population but business people will troop in during school days selling one thing or the order in front of the school gate. Now what are they capitalizing on, STUDENT TRAFFIC. So what am I saying? For you to make good money from your site, you need GOOD QUALITY TARGETED TRAFFIC. Traffic generates sales and you get traffic when your blog is filled with quality and original content.
Now how will you monetize your traffic?
There are lots of ways to monetize a blog; this also depends on what your blog is all about. I will share with you some simple ways you can make money from your blog site.
ADVERTISE
When your blog start garnering a lot of readers; celebrities, companies, businesses, schools, government, TV shows will like to partner with you in terms of displaying their brands in your site. This brings a lot of money. Online advertisement is taking over conventional way of advertising (radio and television).
PPC/CPA
You can make steady cash flow through sponsored ads by advertisement companies like Google Adsense, Chitika, AD:Dynamo and a whole lot of them. You just need to sign up with them and if you are accepted, you are given a unique link/banner which you will strategically position in your blog. When their banner is placed in your site, you are paid a little amount of money depending on the number of clicks, action or impression. Most do not require your audience to buy anything for you to get paid; once they click on the links/banners you are getting paid. This is called PPC (paid per click). Others may require your audience to not only click but perform an action either by signing up/register, completing a survey or making a purchase. This is called CPA (cost per action) and always pays more.
PPC options include Adsense, AD:Dynamo, Bidvertiser.
CPA options include AdBrite and ValueClickMedia.
INFORMATION PRODUCTS
Selling of useful information is very profitable. A lot of people seek for one solution or the other in the internet. You can sell your own e-books, audios and videos. When your readers trust you, they can buy products you recommend but make sure that what you sell in your site is worth paying for else you will lose your loyal readers and fans. Remember, entrepreneurship is all about solving problems. When you provide the solution people need, you are rewarded.
AFFILIATE PRODUCTS
This is another big way of building online income. Here, you offer other peoples product to your readers and get paid an agreed percentage when they purchase the product. But like I mentioned earlier, make sure the products you are marketing are worth buying and of quality. So anytime you buy any material that you feel is very resourceful and can be resold with the permission of the owner for a percentage, why not, you will be making steady streams of income when you recommend it. You can also join affiliate networks that have a lot of products available for marketing. Place the unique banner bearing your affiliate ID in your blog and once a purchase is made through your link or banner you are paid.
Popular affiliate networks you can try include Commission Junction, Amazon Associates, JUMIA, ShareASale.
CONSULTING AND OTHER SERVICES
When you have built a good reputation online some of your readers will like to know your secret, others may want to follow your step; you can teach them online or guide them through achieving success even without seeing them. You can also offer to build a site for them to start like you. These kinds of service do not come free.
These and other ways bloggers can use to monetize their blog.
If you are a blogger and making good money from your blog using a method not listed above please do share with us and leave a link to your blog.

Thank you for reading