How to make money blogging - check list for starting a business online

Back in the days of brick and mortar, in order to start a business you had to have some capital and a line of credit to get things off the ground.  Today, you need a good idea, a computer, some learnable skills, an Internet connection and, most importantly, passion for your project.

For lack of a better phrase, I'm going to call what I'm outlining here a business model. This model, although simple, still requires a lot of work, determination and you have to learn to laugh in the face of disaster when nobody seems to care about your project. Until they do.

The business model is simple: create a blog or web site focusing on a specific topic or product line and then let web surfers know about it through literally thousands of different online marketing methods.

Let's say your idea is to have a blog which covers Alternative Music. The blog may consist of articles that you write reviewing bands, concerts and recordings, as well as gossip you uncover about the musicians themselves. Here is a list of things I think you'll need to spend some time on to get your project off the ground.

1) Secure your domain name or blog.

Even though you probably won't actually be posting anything just yet, spend a lot of time thinking about what you want to call your blog and/or what domain name you want for your web site. Research similar sites and bookmark every one of them for future reference.

As far as a domain name goes, we shall go with "alternativemusicgossip.com" (which is actually available if anyone wishes to grab it and try this very idea). But wait, what if you don't want to purchase a domain name and have a monthly or annual hosting fee? No problem. You can create your "web site" using any of many free blogging sites. Personally, I use Google's blogspot program because I initially figured that placing Google Adsense ads would be much simpler since they own the whole ball of wax. Use the same care in creating your blog name. If you wish to use Google's blogspot, you'll need a Gmail account. I create a new Gmail account for each blog to help keep them separate and that allows you to create different, distinct profiles for each of your blogs.

Once you have your blog set up, play around with it if you wish. Check out different looks. Write a draft of one of your ideas. Start working on your description. Then, move on to step two.

2) Decide how you plan to make money from your blog.

Are you creating a blog to just share information? If so, you'll want to explore affiliate and ad serving networks like Amazon and Google's AdSense. Do you have actual products you want to sell? Then you'll need to set up some sort of shopping cart and some method of accepting payment. There are lots of options out there, but I use PayPal's. It's free (you pay them a little piece only when you sell something) and most people seem to have a PayPal account. Again, do your own research and find a solution that fits you best. Here is a page I created for one of my allegedly funny products which utilizes all three of the above mentioned services: AdSense, Amazon.com and PayPal's shopping cart. If the visitor doesn't want to buy my t-shirt, they may be interested in whatever ad was served up by AdSense or one of the Amazon product ads I have featured on the page.

So, once you have your blog set up (though not yet live), then I suggest getting started on your methods of bringing in money. Get an Adsense account. Get an affiliate account with Amazon. Set up your PayPal account. Then read, read read. They all have great tutorials, FAQ's and forums to help you along.

Another great thing about these specific services is that Google has created widgets embedded right into your blog interface to add Amazon products and Adsense ads with just a couple of clicks. More on that in future postings, but you'll probably figure it out by then.

3) Promote your page.

This is the part that never ends. In the course of trying to let people know about your blog you will find approximated four gazillion ways to get your name out there. A lot of them sound really good, but suck. Some of them are very effective for targeted audiences. The one that I know works for sure is simply minding your SEO (search engine optimization).

The major search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing are essentially a robot which searches your pages (and the whole rest of the planet's) looking for the specific words that the web surfer typed in. If those relevant words are somewhere on your page (preferably in the title), your page will be ranked (once it's indexed by the engine). The trick is to manipulate your keywords and descriptions so that yours comes up before your competitors.

Believe me, that ain't easy.

I could spend screen after screen just talking about this topic (and many blogs do), but I'm going to just cover the basics which should help you be on your way to learning and implementing more.

Put on your thinking cap and ask yourself, "What words would I key into a search engine if I were trying to find what it is I'm offering?" Then, search those words and see what comes up. If you find a web site that you particularly like, you can see what additional information they may have hiding in the background by viewing their page source and checking  out their meta tags (way more on this in the future). Just go up to the top of your browser and click on View and then Source (or something similar depending on your browser), and you will be able to see all of the code used to create the web site or blog you are viewing.  You will most likely see meta keywords, title, meta description and alt tags on photos and images. These are all ways that you can add extra frequency of the words that you think are most important in conveying the purpose of your blog or site.

This may seem confusing right now, but it will all fall into place later and who knows, you may just come up with a viral idea that is going to have tens of thousands of people flocking to your page and generating lots of money for you even before you figure it out. That's the exciting thing about this arena. It does happen every day.

For a page like this one, what do I think people may key into search engines to find it? Here are some ideas:

"How can I make money by blogging?"
"How do I start an online business?"
"Can I place ads on my blog?"
"How do I make money with AdSense?"
"How do I create a blog?"
"Make money online."
"Do people make money from blogs?"

See what I did there? I just put all of those keywords right into the body of my blog, making those relevant, descriptive phrases searchable. How did you find this page?

If you are somewhat web savvy, I recommend double-dipping (in a non-spamming way). Create a blog and duplicate the basic content (with different keywords, ads, etc.) with a web site. I do this with Hooked On Droid. Hooked on Droid is a blog/web site which reviews Smartphone apps, primarily for the Android market (although many of the apps are also available for Blackberry and iPhone). Here is the web site link, and here is the blog link. See what I'm sayin' here?

Which reminds me of my next topic (not right now), backlinks. Stay tuned.

Now get to work. And let me know how it's going.