5 Top Secrets to Blog Your Way to the Bank

Are you seeking for a way to make some extra income online then blogs can be a very good way to get started. To the majority of people, a blog is just a fun thing you could have to write your opinions in and making money with blogs is only for a few lucky students that stumbled on a popular topic.

For those who know the full potential of this money making medium also know that it?s not just setting up a blog and watch the money flow into your bank account. Yes, it takes a bit of luck as well as a lot of work and effort in order to be successful but if you are consistent, determined and work for a long term strategy, you will be rewarded.

For people that haven’t a clue about blogs and blogging, a free blogging service like blogger.com is advised to start up with and learn the ropes. However, if you are serious about blogging, you should look at registering your own domain and get a hosting account for your blog as soon as possible.

I will now reveal my top 5 secret steps to build a money making blog. They are research, setup, optimization, monetization and traffic driving:

1. Research a Niche – To find a niche that you are comfortable blogging about, you can for instance take a look at popular magazines in Amazon, popular products in Ebay and most published/view articles in Ezinearticles. Write down your niche ideas and choose a subniche from each that has at least 10-500 searches per day in Wordtracker. Also search google for the main niche keyphrase and favor phrases that have under 10.000 competing pages in Google. Also check Clickbank and Commission Junction to see if there are good products that match the keywords.

2. Blog Setup – In order to get some extra Google love, chose your domain name wisely by including your main keyword. For the dog training niche you could choose a name like mydogtrainingguides.com. Install the recommended WordPress platform and optimize your blog with essential plugins like All-in-One SEO Pack, Google XML Sitemaps, Feedburner, Akismet, Google Analytics and Auto Social.

3. Populate your Blog – Choose 2-3 main keyword phrases to start optimizing your blog for. Use phrases that you gathered from the research phase to find content for your blog by searching Ezinearticles, technorati, PRweb, forums, magazines and books. You can also use Google Alerts to receive daily keyword specific articles. Make daily posts by rewriting the content you gathered in your own style or just adding your comments under the article. Don’t just copy other peoples work. Include keywords in the title, body and header tags but don’t over optimize the posts.

4. Blog Monetization – Clickbank and Commision Junction are excellent affiliate networks to find all kind of products to promote. Another way is to search Google for [main keyword] + affiliates (or affiliate program). Sprinkle your affiliate links throughout the blog and put a few nice looking banners in the sidebar. It’s important not to have too many banners, since lots of people are allergic to advertisement banners.

5. Traffic Generation – Start submitting articles to Ezinearticles.com, Goarticles.com, Isnare.com and other article directories. If you want more exposure, consider using an article submission service. Submit your RSS feed to RSS services such as Feedsubmitter.com, Feedagg.com, Feedage.com and Feedfury.com. Make a bookmark of each post in social bookmarking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Del.icio.us and Propeller. Socialmarker is a resource that automatically posts to all these sites with a click on the mouse. For more backlinks comment on other people’s blogs and create article pages on free webservices like Squidoo, Hubpages, Weebly and Blogger.

If you are persistent and keep doing the traffic generation tactics mentioned above you will soon see a boost in visitors and hopefully a good amount of revenue stream. Always strive for good quality content that enriches the users experience and update your blog regularly.

If your blog doesn?t perform as well after doing all of the above tactics for a month or two, you could turn down the effort and some Adsense on it instead. Repeat the process on a new blog. All blogs does not become successful and some take a long time to do, by having a couple of blogs out there you will spread your chance of hitting a gold mine.

For more detailed blog building strategies, I suggest you take a look at the highly successful blogger Rob Benwell’s latest e-book: Blogging to the Bank 3.0. This guide will show you everything you need to know in order to create your money making blog. My second suggestion is to take a look at Firepow, Andrew Hansen’s latest masterpiece, a tool which will automate most of the tasks needed to setup your blog, find content and promote it. If you want all your blogs neatly organized in one single interface, this tool is for you.

Related posts:

1. Blogging To The Bank 2.0
2. Read This If You Thought Blogging To The Bank 3.0 Is A Scam
3. Blog Website Leads Hits Web Traffic SEo Secrets Revealed Online
4. Best Countries to Open an Offshore Bank Account
5. Serve Up Yummy Recipes for your Blog Readers