Personal Development - for the entrepreneur

The Best Source of Income

The search engine giant Google rules the Internet. It’s the most popular search engine getting millions of hits per day. When a person wants to search for something on the Internet he/she is most likely to look it up in Google search. Google allows advertisers to use its services. It prepares advertisements according to client specifications. Now where does Google put the advertisements once they are ready?

On your blog, of course. And you will be paid for that.

What You have to Do

Once your blog is up you should contact Google to put its ads on it. For that first you will need to have an Ad Sense account with Google. Setting up an AdSense account is free and the process is easy. Read their terms and conditions clearly before signing up for AdSense account.

Signing up for an AdSense account takes minutes. After that you can log in to your account and get the desired ads on your blog or website.

Remember not to try to have more than one AdSense account on your name. That’s not allowed by Google, probably for tax reasons. You can use one AdSense account for any number of websites or blogs.

How It Works

Advertisers that are interested in putting their ads through Google, would sign up with AdWords. You, the blogger, need not bother about this. The advertiser would chose a pay rate that he is willing to pay per click of his ad displayed on a blog or website. Google collects money from the advertiser, keeps a part of that as its service fee and pays you as well as other websites for displaying the ad. You will not be paid for simply putting ads on your blog or webpage. People should click on the ads placed and you will be paid per click. Now some ad clicks can fetch just a few cents while others can earn a few dollars. It depends on the rate the advertiser has agreed with Google.

Here is a List of Things You Can Do

• Keep your content updated. Check your content regularly to prevent it from getting obsolete. What you posted a few months back might have earned you a lot of traffic…but it may require a few modifications now.

• Using current topics or breaking news help in attracting attention.

• Don’t make your blog too much of a personal one unless you are talking about your experiences as a World War II victim or you are one of the lucky few that were there in the twin towers and survived the 9/11 bombings.

• Write lively and positive things. Avoid dark and depressing things.

• Use humor in your blog.

• Link other sites to you. Let other sites to have a link back to them. Allow them to return the favor too.

• Include eye catching features like: polls, site meters, and comments.

• Add good quality pictures to your blogs. After all – a picture speaks better than a thousand words.

• Put only ads on your blog that are less distracting. Avoid using the ads that pop up and cover half the screen.

• Participate in blog carnivals. When someone takes a number of good blogs on a given topic and puts it in one blog it’s called a blog carnival. Blog carnivals are the best way to get popularity when your blog is new and little known.

• Make sure that your blog is up all the time. Chose a web host that has prompt customer service.

• As you take all care to present yourself for a date or a presentation, likewise design your blog smartly. Let the blog be well dressed with nice colors and fonts.

A Technique No Blogger can Do Without

When it comes to monetizing your blog and attracting more traffic, search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are the next thing that should be taken care of, after posting good content. The need of search engine optimization is now known to all bloggers. A blog without the SEO techniques is like a knife without a cutting edge. So every blogger or website owner is attempting to make his blog more visible, either by himself or with the help of SEO consultants.

Normally, search engine optimization consultants advise the use of certain keywords to in the content. They know the words that are currently popular among searchers.

How It Works

The webmaster/SEO consultant can help you in preparing keyword rich content and meta tags that are essential in SEO. You can take his help and register the website or blog with popular search engines like Yahoo and Google. The spiders or robots of these search engines index the website or blog by going through the content and meta tags. Once somebody types a search word in the search form these spiders scan through the indexes and pop up the websites that are more relevant to searched words.

So it helps here to have content with keywords that will most likely be searched.

However, in the zeal to make a website or blog more visible web masters or search engine consultants should not resort to ‘keyword stuffing’ or ‘spamdexing’. That may risk the site or blog getting banned by the website and losing considerable traffic. Search engine optimization requires that the density of keyword should be such that it is neither sparse nor too dense. Search engines make their optimization policies clear from time to time and SEO consultants should follow them.

Good Content

Traffic cannot guarantee revenue for your blog, but the amount of revenue that your blog generates solely depends on traffic - tricky yet true. More people visiting your blog doesn’t necessarily mean more revenue. But you cannot earn revenue unless people start visiting your blog. So you have to get visitors - the more the better.

For that to happen the first step is to have good and original content. The content you put in your blog should make interesting copy to read. There should be something for the readers in the content to keep their attention riveted and make them come back for more. That will not happen simply because your writing style is great or simply because you have chosen a few good keywords. Substance is important. When you write with passion about things with substance, people sense that you have something genuine to say. And they start believing you. Of course good writing style and keywords help. But substance and passion are the greater considerations.

Suitability of Content

The writing style should suit your target readers. If you are writing for an audience that are educated and well read it is absolutely necessary that your content is free of grammatical errors and has a better vocabulary. From the street smart to the refined, whatever your target audience is it helps to have content free of grammatical errors.

If your blog is to address youngsters you should be talking to them in their language. Though youngsters in America still talk in English, they use a lot of words that sounds good only on a youngster’s mouth. Similarly, if you are blogging on technological topics addressed to technical people, your knowledge of technology should be sound and you should be using a lot of technical jargons.

A common mistake to avoid in this regard is to speak to the laymen with a content loaded with business and technical terms.

A Step by Step Guide to Start

Here is a step by step guide on how to go about setting up a blog and start earning money.

• First of all, be sure that you have something interesting to say in your blog. People aren’t going to visit your blog simply because you have set it up. To get readers to visit and actually read your blog you need to write about topics that interest readers and make them come back for more.

• There are many blog publishing platforms that allow you to start a blog for free or for a nominal charge. Avoid platforms that want to share your revenues. WordPress is a wonderful place to start as it has got a lot of user friendly features. They have a free service or charge a very nominal fee for letting you publish your blog.

• Don’t limit yourself to a blog. Go ahead and turn that in to a website. Register the domain name of your website with the help of a good web hosting service. Stick to the web hosting services that have good customer support. There may be a slight variation in the costs, but the range of cost is still very low. So cost should not be a criterion when choosing a web hosting service.

• Once you are all set start posting your articles. Here your knowledge of web technologies is going to make a vital difference in how much you will earn. Nowing XHTML, HTML, RSS feed, SEO techniques, and getting traffic are going to generate a lot of revenue.

• Make sure that you have more than one source of income from your blog. AdSense, individual ads and text link ads – you should have them all on your blog.

Additionally, it pays to be vigilant and report about spamming, unauthorized use of your blog by advertisers, and sometimes hijacking of the website. You need to report these to your blog platform provider/web hosting service provider immediately.

Just do these and keep your fingers crossed. The checks will start pouring in, first slowly and later at a rapid pace.

Most Jobs are for Dumb People

Our social conditioning is so strong that this may come as a shock to many people. Not have a JOB? How can one even think like this? Well, what do we do to pay the bills then? How to buy food, pay off the loans, and educate the children?

That’s why the only thing most people think after their graduation is – getting a job. And the interest to get jobs is so strong that some people do not even hesitate to be unethical in the competition to bag their coveted jobs.

But such people do not realize that they are doing a dumb thing by trading their talents for a fixed monthly income. Jobs bring in a sense of financial security, a false sense of security that can evaporate the moment the boss utters the dreaded words – you’re fired.

Freedom of Being Jobless

Moreover, people with jobs fall in to the trap of working according to the rules set by somebody else. They gradually become slaves to the stupid rules. Many people with jobs live in constant fear of their bosses and job losses. They do not have the freedom to wear the dress they like, the food they are going to eat, and the holiday they are going to spend.

Being jobless is different from being unproductive. You can be jobless but be very productive. Starting something on your own could mean that you are jobless, yet productive. It could be tough initially when you start your own business and you may be required to work long hours. But it is much better than working for somebody else. Your entire profit is yours. There wouldn’t be anyone siphoning away a major share of your real earnings and throwing you a pittance.

When you set up your own business you banish the ‘boss’ from your life. You do have the freedom of choosing your hours of work, the kind of dress you would wear to work, and the kind of people you will work with. And you could be laughing all the way to the bank too.

How Much can You Earn

If you are interested and comfortable with the idea of earning money from your blog, the good news is – you can earn a decent amount from it.

Anybody who has started a blog and has a Google Adsense account will make some money that can range from a few dollars to a few hundreds of dollars a year. That’s no big deal and requires little effort. We are not talking of that. We are talking of decent livable incomes - high five figure incomes or more - may be in excess of $1000/day as some blogs are fetching. Yes, you read it right – more than $1000 a day.

Blogging is a low barrier entry field and there are many players in it. Not all of these will be able to succeed in making money. Only 1 percent of the bloggers will make decent livable income or even more. For that they need to be smart and willing to put in a full time effort. Additionally, though hard work definitely pays, it pays better to be smart and diligent.

What You Have to Do

To make serious money from blogging you need to be web savvy. That would require you to know a few things about the web like HTML/CSS, RSS/syndication, SEO techniques etc. to make your blog more visible and attract high traffic. Being web savvy scores over people, who are not, when it comes to blogging. You must learn about latest web technologies. This is the prime factor that makes a difference between financial success or failure of a blog.

Your blog should be interesting to others in order to generate traffic and revenue. The best way to generate revenue from ads on your blog is to avoid putting all eggs in one basket. Instead of depending on Google AdSense only, successful bloggers have other streams of incomes. Some of the other sources of income for your blog are: donations (payments made via PayPal or checks), text link ads (sold for a fixed amount per month), Chitika eMiniMalls, affiliate programs like Amazon or LinkShare, and individual advertisers. Multiple sources of income ensure that if one source dries up other sources continue to bring in the revenues.

And it doesn’t take thousand of dollars to start blogging. You can start with less than a hundred dollars to make more than a hundred dollars a day. Isn’t that exciting?