Making money as a blogger is actually a very simple thing.   All a good blogger needs is an idea. By that I mean that a blog must have an overall theme in order to survive in the blogging world.

If you fancy yourself as a blogger, try to think of a niche idea. That means a speciality area on which you will base your blog. Take a look at all the big blogs and bloggers on the internet and you will see that they are all written around a topic.

For example, you might be good at woodwork, so you could blog about that. You might be more interested in news around your area, so you could become a local news blogger. Maybe you are an artist, or an author, a chef, or even a motor mechanic. Whatever your interests you can use them to make your blog interesting and set yourself up as a professional blogger.

Why stick to niche blogging?  Well, if you hope to earn from your blog then you need to categorize it, no matter how loosely. For example, if you are a blogger who writes about blogging and blogging software, make sure that you stay in that area with your blog posts. That way you will get known as an expert blogger in your category.

Furthermore, as you become an established blogger you will attract advertising that will match the kind of readers you get. This is vital because a blogger who blogs about woodwork, for example, doesn’t want advertising about knitting, dancing and cooking because his visitors will not be interested in it. You can even go out there and approach bigger websites and bloggers and sell your own advertising space on your blog.

All this takes fine tuning and patience and being a professional blogger who actually earns from blogging is quite a challenge.  Any blogger can have a successful blog that earns money from several sources but it takes a lot of blogging and a lot of dedication. It won’t happen overnight.

A blogger may know how to drive traffic to a blog but if the content sucks readers will bounce right off.  A blog with bad content will have few repeat readers; and like any business, it’s the repeat customers that will make or break a blog.  A blogger needs to offer quality articles. 

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So, how do bloggers write quality articles?  Better still, how do bloggers write quality short articles?  Why short?  As a rule, the longer an article is on a computer screen the more impatient a reader becomes.  This is not something I just made up.  This is something that online professional editors know well.

In my opinion, the one word that characterizes a well written blog post is “conciseness”.  My dictionary says conciseness means “brief but comprehensive”.  And that means the blogger gets to the point.

Money making by blogging means good online marketing; but successful blogging also means writing quality articles.

Don’t get me wrong.  Grammar counts.  Spelling counts.  Punctuation counts and good content definitely counts.  But if a blog doesn’t have conciseness, the blogger is already two strikes behind the count.

One more strike and you’re out.

Sometimes I think, wouldn’t it be great to be a full time blogger?  Then I realize that’s not what I really mean.  What I really mean is, it would be great to make a living as a full time blogger.  I am a full time blogger.  I’m just not making a living at blogging.  For a blogger to make a living, the blogger’s blog must shine.  What to do?  What to do?

Obviously, I don’t know.  Right?  But maybe we can figure this out together.

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There use to be a blog published in Pittsburgh called PittGirl.  It was very popular.  The local newspapers would comment on the blog.  No one knew the identity of the blogger.  No one even knew if the blogger was female.  PittGirl said she worked downtown and her daily posts carried a lot of gossip about the local work scene, local politics and local sports.  She knew the dirt.  She was irreverent, had a phobia of pigeons and spiced her reporting with dirty words.

Then one day PittGirl ran her last post, saying that someone was getting too close to outting her and that could cost her her job.  The blog was deleted.

I only caught the end of PittGirl’s reign as the most popular blog in Pittsburgh.  I can only estimate the money making potential of that blog.  It was a marketing dream come true.

I think we can conclude that out of all of the thousands of blogs in the Pittsburgh area, PittGirl was one of a kind.  Obviously, my blog is not one of a kind.

But I’m working on it.

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As far as I can tell, a blogger must do two things to be a successful blogger.  The blogger must try to keep the same readers coming back; and the blogger must constantly attract new readers.

The reason my blog has so many different subjects on it is because the blog must constantly attract new readers.  My hope is that some of the new readers will find something in the core subject of the blog that will turn them into regular readers.

My target audience, beginning writers, will find plenty of reasons to keep coming back.  How does a blogger find his or her target audience?  It’s easy.

The blogger must figure out what he or she could blog about endlessly. 

It really doesn’t matter what it is.  Just so long as the blogger can turn out a constant stream of content on it.  Someone on the Internet will want to read it.  But you must have a target reader in mind and aim your content at that reader.  Then every once in awhile throw in some content aimed at readers who are not part of your target audience.

Let me add, if you mainly blog about yourself your target reader is really only one person.  Make sure your target reader is someone else besides yourself.  A blog should entertain, inform or do both.  I read a report once that estimated there are 3 billion or more people on the Internet. 

Your target audience is waiting.

All this demands work that is at once formidable and distinctly unappealing. We need tools that can help us to write a quick blog 365 days a year.

Fortunately, there are easy-to-use tools that help you clip text, pictures or audio files and comment on them and post them to your blogs. Many of us reproduce the entire Triond article or write a short intro and then link back to the original article.

But there is a better way.

Say, you have written an article on how to prevent diabetes. Now you come across a journal or newspaper article that talks of a groundbreaking research that sheds some light on diabetes prevention. Now you can use the clipping tools to clip portions of the research, append some explanatory notes and a link to your article and then post it to social networking sites like Facebook or Friendfeed.

Most tools support Blogger and Wordpress blogs, and both these sites offer free membership. So let’s review some of these tools.

Sidewiki:

Sidewiki is a tool that comes with Google toolbar. You need to have Firefox 2+ (I found it had some glitches with the latest version of Firefox) or Internet Explorer 6+). Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar when you click the Sidewiki icon, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. Anyone can write comment on the article, and you can not only post your own comments but also others as well. The comments are public and they can carry external links. Your name carries a hyperlink to your Google profile, which in turn can carry a link to your website.

Here’s the screenshot of my article How Diabetes Affects the Kidneys and the Sidewiki entry I have written for it.

You can also write comments on it by clicking on Write An Entry (you need to have Google Toolbar installed on your browser). Google’s algorithm will decide whose comments appear on top — of course, the author’s comments will have the top slot.

After I posted the above Sidewiki entry on to my Blogger, this is what I got:

Of course, the blog doesn’t seem to make much sense, but I can go and edit my blog later. The Sidewiki Clip and Post helps one to freeze their thoughts on to their blogs immediately before they forget what and where they read a particular information.

Here are a couple of videos that explain and demonstrate the process.

The following video shows you how you can post to Blogger after writing an entry.

Amplify

Amplify is another web site that makes it easy to clip texts, images and videos and share and post comments on them. You can sync Amplify with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Friendfeed, delicious and Clipmarks.com to keep your friends updated with interesting things you Amplify from the web.

Clipmarks

Clipmark’s interface and look-and-feel is similar to Amplify, because both are powered by the same people. You can post not only to Blogger, but to LiveJournal, Movable Type and Typepad as well. Amplify offers extra options to share with social bookmarking sites, but Clipmarks has its own strength too. You can create a ClipCast, which is a slideshow of clips you have collected from the web, including your own Triond articles, and put them on Facebook (You have to install Clipmarks app).

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I know the importance of key words and phrases.  But recently I realized I could increase traffic to my blog with hardly any effort at all.

My goal as a professional blogger is to make money online.  I know my blog must have interesting content; but I was not using my tags effectively.

The Gazette has 1,000 postings.  Looking at my dashboard recently I was dismayed to see that I had less than 3,000 tags for all 1,000 postings.  In other words, for over a year now I’ve been using the same basic tags over and over again. 

Now of course my blog has a narrow focus.  Using the same key words and phrases, the same tags that search engines use to find the content of a blog is understandable but it’s not smart marketing.  The solution is easy enough.  I do blog about subjects beyond the core subjects of the Gazette.

So, from now on I will consciously use not only the obvious tags of the core material but I’ll also use tags that will broaden the reach of my blog.

I’m learning to be a better blogger in spite of myself.

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First off, the blog has 1,000 postings.  Each posting has several tags.  Let’s say each posting has 10 tags.  That’s 10,000 ways for readers to find my blog.

The core subject of the blog is blogging, flash fiction and how to write it; the blog also deals with everything from crock pot cooking to a link to a photo of Mariah Carey nude.  In other words the blog has stickiness.  Readers find the blog looking for one thing and end up staying or coming back because of another thing.

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Stickiness is at the heart of making money online.  I make money off of my personal blog because it sends a constant flow of readers to my Triond content.

The reason I don’t blog more on the Gazette is because of the amount of time I spend blogging on Triond.  But I’m always trying to figure out new ways to keep the Gazette relevant so that even though I seldom blog on it the Gazette will continue to send readers to my Triond articles.

Lately, I was thinking of interviewing local business owners who could use some free publicity in one of the best flash fiction publications on the Internet.  The interviews would bring me more readers and the owners more customers.

The idea just might work.

When it’s fresh and new it’s so exciting. At the beginning of creating your blog, you don’t know exactly where it’s going. Is this a long term commitment? Or just a short fling of a topic you won’t find interesting in the morning?

So you begin this budding relationship, you and your blog. You go into a frenzy of activity. It starts with the tease of topic ideas bursting to mind, to the climax of completing an article… maybe even completing articles several times a day. Your fingers scamper across the keyboard like you can’t get enough of your blog. Like you’re creating a magic no other writer has ever felt or could ever imagine.

And then it strikes. Maybe it’s a few days later or a few weeks later, you start to lose your deep desire. You ignore your blog. Any thoughts of articles or topics weigh heavy on your mind like you’ve been forced into a relationship you’re just not ready for. You want a life of your own. To go out with friends.  To spend time on Facebook. And you feel guilty for letting your mind stray.

It’s almost like you and your blog are having a fight, and now you’re not speaking to each other. You begin to wonder if your blog is good enough for you. I mean, all that hard work you put into it, and what does your blog do? Hmph! Barely a thing! With a ten cent profit yesterday, you know your blog doesn’t appreciate all you do to fill it up.

You just need a break.

And than it passes. Your stop ignoring your blog. You realize it’s not all about the money. And you truly enjoy what you have with your blog. It’s special. Yes, your mother may still think you’re wasting your time with that cold heartless laptop that also seems clung to you at all times. But you know what you feel. You know it’s real. You know you’ll go through hard times again. But you’ll always go back. And your blog will always be there.

Okay, first off your blog has to be focused on something.  My blog, Pittsburgh Flash Fiction Gazette, is focused on the art of flash fiction.  So in the Gazette you will find a lot of flash fiction stories and articles about writing flash fiction.  So far so good.  But that’s not good enough. 

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Flash fiction is too narrow.  There is a definite audience for flash fiction but that audience does not send me enough hits.  If you’re into blogging for money, and I am, online writing means pulling in as many visitors as possible.  This means I blog about more than just flash fiction.  In the Gazette a reader will find articles about crock pot cooking, Pittsburgh, politics, sexuality, social security, erotica, public television, University of Pittsburgh and anything else that catches my fancy. 

I’ve had readers find the Gazette through the tag “carpel tunnel”.  I’ve had carpel tunnel and I blogged about it.  You should see the tags that bring people to the Gazette.  Some of the tags I can’t print here.  Let’s just say, when a visitor finds the Gazette that person has a lot of things to hold his or her interest.  I try to make the pages of my personal blog sticky.  There’s plenty for those who enjoy flash fiction and a little bit for everyone else.

The idea of stickiness is a good online marketing tool and is good for any online business.  How sticky is your blog?

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Why did I write porn, flash fiction stories full of raw sex?  Because of the number of hits I got every day.  I was making money.  The type of online writing I was doing is BIG business.

You will be surprised where I got the idea for a blog with adult short stories as an important part of the content.  My niece is a web cam stripper.  Her name is Brianna Frost.  You can google her.  She goes by her mother’s maiden name.  For a while there she was an Internet sensation.  One of her videos would get a million hits in a month.  She made a good living at it, too.  A one month membership to her site was $19.95.

I figured if she could make good money from sex I could make good money from sex, too.  Of course I’m not young, shapely, female and beautiful.

So, I became a sex blogger.  And Adsense banned me for life.  I forget the name of my old blogspot blog.  Once I realized my career blogging porn was over I deleted the blog.  My real name was all over it.  At least I hope no one can find it.

That’s what I did for money.  Brianna has since moved to Arizona to be with her boyfriend.  She and I were never close.  I’ve had no contact with her since she was a little girl.  I wish her luck.  She’ll need it.  She won’t always be young, shapely and beautiful.

I know what money, the dream of a lot of money, can do to you.