How I Make Money on The Internet
Making Money On The Internet
How do you make money online ?
How do you make money on the internet ?
Please help me to make money from the internet ?
These are the questions that I receive frequently on my contact form, facebook andtwitter accounts. Unfortunately, I don’t do private coaching so I can’t help on a personal basis. Even I directed these people to some of my blog posts to answer their questions, many will come back and ask a general question again “How Can I Make Money On The Internet ?”. The question is too general to answer. There are many ways to make money on the internet. So, today’s post is about how I make money online…
Make Money Online Blogging
There are a lot of ways one can make money online but my favorite is blogging. Basically, I create blogs in a certain topic or niche and start monetizing them from the start. I don’t wait before I start monetizing my blogs as to get the readers used to the available ads. If you aim to make money from your blog, monetize the blog from the beginning.
That’s it. I just create blogs to make money online. This is what I do and this what I love besides earning money from the blogs. I have been doing this since September 2007 and never look back ever since. I can stop blogging or stop updating my blogs for a year but the checks will always come at the end of the month. This is residual income. Off course if I don’t do anything, my income will start dropping. What I’m trying to say here is that blogging is a great tool to make money residual money on the internet.
However, many bloggers will not make enough money to support their livelihood or just making a few dollars every month. Many will give up after a few months when they don’t see any income. If you have been told that you can make money blogging overnight, you have been duped though there are ways to make money overnight like thru PPC marketing etc. Blogging takes time to make money. You have to be patient and work hard to make money online by blogging. Trust me the money will come if you work hard on your blog.
How To Start Blogging
First, you need to find a topic or niche for your blog. This is very important as you want people to read your blog. For a start find a topic that you are familiar with so that you don’t have problem writing articles for that blog. Don’t start a blog about making money online when you are just starting to learn the tricks yourself. Find a topic that you are comfortable writing about. For example, if you like travelling, you can start a blog about your travel journeys. Or if you are a full-time housewife, you want might want to start a blog about your favorite recipes. Get what I mean ?
However, there millions of other travel and recipes blogs out there. You need to narrow down your topic or niche. You can start a travel blog for Malaysia instead of a travel blog about the world. You can even narrow down further by focusing on Malaysia theme parks for example. This way you will have less competitions for your blog. Less competitions means it is easier to rank your blog for the topics.
You can also do a research about what is the latest topics that people are searching for. Topics like iPhone and iPad are top on people search list currently. You might want to start a blog on the topics but narrow down your niche. You could choose Malaysia iPhone Apps as your blog topic. It is always better to limit your blog niche to a certain topic instead of making it a general blog about everything.
Find Good Domain Name and Blog Hosting
You can create a free blog at many free blogging platform like Blogger but if you are serious about making money from your blog, go for WordPress.Org. You need to pay to use WordPress.org blogging platform. WordPress is the best blogging platform that you can use for your blog. Again choose your blog hosting wisely as this will be your first important investment. If your blog is targeting Malaysians, then you should find a blog hosting in Malaysia so that your blog load faster for your readers as the server is nearby. I used to host this blog at BlueHost which are located at the USA but have since moved to ExaBytes Malaysia whose server are located at Putrajaya. This blog is now significantly faster to load couple with the CDN that I’m using.
A good domain name is important for your blog. You should choose a domain name that is simple and easy to remember. It’s also good to have the main keyword in your domain name. For example, if your blog is about travel to malaysia, you might want to choose a domain name like 1MalaysiaTravelBlog.Com . Always go for the .com domain as this is the main top level domain. You could also go for com.my or .my domain for your Malaysians blog however you need to have a company to be able to register these domain extensions. A domain name is important for your blog as your blog readers will have more trust on you if you using a top level domain name. Imagine a blog about making money online is using abc.blogspot.com as compare to abc.com, which blog will you trust. The answer is obvious.
WordPress Theme and Plugin
I trust you are going to choose WordPress.org as your blogging platform and now you will need to choose your wordpress theme. There are a lot of free wordpress themes out there that you can use. You just need to search on Google. I’m using a premium wordpress theme called Thesis at this blog. Thesis is an awesome theme that is search engines optimized which are great for your blog SEO. Though Thesis Theme is easy to customize, I prefer the simple look for my blogs. You can choose to use any of the free wordpress themes available out there or buy a premium theme for your blog. You can find popular wordpress plugins for your blog at the WordPress Plugins Directory.
Monetizing Your Blog
There are various ways you can monetize your blog. Selling ads space is the favorite among bloggers. I don’t like to sell my ads space as I making more money promoting other people’s products. I don’t have my product to sell so I sell other blogger products. I also make of use affiliate networks to find related products to promote at my blogs. It is important to promote products that are related to your blog topic. You shouldn’t be promoting web hosting products at your travel related blog instead you should promote hotels, vacation, travel books etc. Promoting the correct products is essential if you want to make money with your blog. Your blog will have higher conversion rate if you are promoting related products.
Sign-up free with these affiliate networks and find the best related products to promote at your blog. Please note that many of these affiliate networks don’t accept blogs using free domain name and free blog hosting. Even a new blog with a few post will sometime be rejected. If you are rejected, wait a month before you apply again. In the meantime, create more contents for your blog. Affiliate program like Google Adsense are getting harder to join these days. You have to make sure you have more than 10 blog posts and your blog is more than six month old before you apply to Google Adsense. You will have to make sure that your blog content is all original. If you are using copied articles from other sites, you will be rejected.
Conclusion
Anybody can start a blog but how many blogs will actually make money for their owners ? Well the figure is too small. Many blogs will just die out or left unattended by their owner. Many bloggers are not patient enough to wait. Many want to see the money overnight. I’m telling it’s not going to happen. Blogging takes time before you can see the real money. Patient and working hard is the key to making money on the internet.
I don’t have any secret formula to share but one thing I know is that persistence is the key here. I will share more on social networking, blog trafiic, blog seo etc on another post. If you are willing to invest, you can join these programs and take your blogging to the next level.