Many people look into blogging for money, but very few become successful. Those few didn't become successful because of luck, they worked consistently and took the time needed to become successful. Most bloggers give up at the beginning because they are to lazy to work hard. People think blogging is one of those "get rich quick" when in reality, it's not. Do you think The Huffington Post and Perez Hilton became big blogs right away? No they didn't, they had to follow many important steps into becoming some of the most successful blogs on the internet.To create a blog you will need to find a niche. A niche is a topic that everything on your blog relates to. An example would be having a blog that is about super heros. Don't think that if your niche isn't good that people won't read. There are millions and millions of people on the internet everyday and chances are you will be read. Don't try to write about news or typical things that everybody does. There's way too many of those and your competition will be hard. Also write about things that can be read at about anytime. What I mean by this is don't write about things that will be old two years later. Write about things that people will still be interested in for years to come. Lastly create a niche that you will like to write about.
Next, write content and really get into it. Don't just write 100 word articles with no value and expect to make some money. The competition in your niche is most likely writing more valuable articles to earn money that you could potentially have made. The blog is yours. Write about anything you would like to get into. In the beginning majority of bloggers will not know what to write about and are worried that no one will read them. PEOPLE WILL READ IF EFFORT WAS PUT INTO IT! If you have experience in a type of work or you have an opinion on things going on in the world, just get on the computer and write.
Putting ads on your blog are your main source of income as a blogger. But you shouldn't put ads on your blog write away. Readers won't like if you have crappy articles but you have ads all over. So wait until you have 5 or 6 good, long articles. The easiest ads to put on your blog is ads from Google Adsense. Google Adsense are ads that you can put onto your blog and the ads will relate to your niche. Another type of ad to put on your blog is Affiliate ads. These are products that pay per click, which means if people click on the product ad, you will earn money. These are great but not to start out with. The first advertisements to put on your blog in my opinion would be Google Adsense just because they are so easy to deal with and they don't put you through the work of finding products in your niche.
Getting traffic to your blog is what every blogger wants. People try to get traffic right away without anything of value on their blogs to show for. Traffic will come, but it takes time. Lots of people use the internet so if it's on there chances are it will be read. I cannot stress this enough, but writing good valuable content will get you lots of traffic. This will bring you returning readers but also readers that are looking for good information too. Also commenting thoughtfully on other blogs in your niche will get you a good way to be checked out by other bloggers. This will start getting you referred traffic to your blog. Referred traffic is traffic that comes from other blogs linking to your blog. I'm not going to get too in-depth on SEO which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Basically to get high on search engines like Google you have to put links into your blog to get noticed. You don't want to play hide and go seek with the search engines so go out and put links in your blog to be found.
Appearance is more than you think. It's sad to say but most people judge websites by the way they look so make sure it's appealing to the eye. Websites like Blogger and Wordpress both let you customize the way your blog looks to fit your liking.
Go out and just write and with time and hard work your blog could become as successful as you'd wish.
Check out Bob Lotich's Blog about Making Money.
