You hear everyone talking about how cool their blog is. Better yet, everyone knows someone making a lot of money online, just from writing articles on their blog or making an eBay store.
Yeah, the whole “make money with eBay” thing was and still is a great opportunity for some, but it’s become more of a fad. Starting a blog is a solid way to make long term income – just for doing some writing on stuff you actually like and care about. Imagine that!
Between Google AdSense, affiliate marketing, sponsored reviews, and the dozens of other site monetization options, you can make a lot of steady, passive income with a blog.
That means you’re making money while you sleep. Seriously, how would you like to make money 24/7, not just when you’re selling your time to an employer?
What’s even better, every blog post you make will be making you money for years to come. Search engines find and cache those posts, and over time each post is “worth more” to the search engines. That means they’ll be sending you’ll get more web site traffic with every passing month.
So what’s stopping you? We did it, and so can you. In just a few months, we went from making $200 per month to $2,000 per month from our blog.
And if you do this right, you too can walk away from that job and be free! Or just make a bunch of extra money. 
Hang on tight and let’s do it together!
Here are 10 EASY steps we’ll take together to get your blog started, and make your blog Ultra Successful.
Decide to start today
TODAY. No, not tomorrow, not next week, and not next month. Tomorrow always feels “safe” because you’re not having to make a decision. The power of today is that you make that commitment to yourself. And that is the first step to success.
This step is the most critical one, and it’s where most people get stuck. Don’t dream about doing something. Just get up and do it.
“The best way to live the life of your dreams is to start living the life of your dreams Today, in every little way that you possibly can”.
– Mike Dooley, www.Tut.com
Choose a niche for your blog – the niche that YOU will dominate
Choosing the right niche for your blog is perhaps the most important choice you can make BEFORE starting a blog. Choose the wrong niche, and it’s very unlikely you’ll ever succeed.
Some questions to help you choose the right niche
- The most important question you have to ask yourself is this: What are you passionate about?
It’ll be very hard for you to write regularly and authoritatively and be a go-to industry expert on a topic you don’t really care about. Passion tends to make the difference between amazing success and quiet failure. - Do you intend to make money with this blog? Would you like it to be your primary income source?
This makes a big difference. If so, you’ll have to choose a nice that is not overly crowded. Regardless of the crowding, you’ll need to research your niche thoroughly and develop your own value proposition.
Research your niche and learn the landscape
Find the popular blogs and websites in your niche, study them closely, and visit them regularly.
Get to know the authors and regular contributors. Comment on these blogs regularly so they can get to know you too.
Find the right keywords to target with your blog
Once you choose your niche, it’s crucial to find just the right keywords to target. This is a delicate balance between finding keywords that get enough search traffic and keywords that don’t have too much competition.
Don’t wait until your blog starts getting popular to figure out which keywords to target, or you’ll waste a lot of time and effort and end up starting from scratch.
While you can do a lot of research the manual, old fashioned, and time consuming way, we recommend you get a proven keyword research tool to find your keywords quickly and accurately.
Get a web hosting account for your blog
Your blog host should be reliable, responsive if you have questions, and inexpensive. $7 per month is reasonable for a reliable host; less than that and the service tends to go down a lot.
Many people try to save those few dollars and instead start with a free blog platform like Blogger.com. But we strongly advise against it. It’s virtually impossible to get free search engine traffic to those free blogs, and support is completely nonexistent. If your blog disappears overnight (as we had happen once on Blogger.com), there’s nobody to call and ask for help. Your work is all lost. You’ll also have a hard time every moving away when your blog takes off. And you’ll lose all the search engine value that you’ve built up.
Take this seriously and go with a proper web host that actually has competent support people available to help you. Spending $7/month for a proper web host will also help you realize that you’re serious about your goal. Do it.
We use and recommend HostGator. The fact that their email support replies to most issues in literally minutes certainly doesn’t hurt. Find out why in our web hosting review of HostGator, and go set up an account with them today.
HostGator is great because it JUST WORKS, they offer a lot of great features, and (unlike most other quality web hosts) you can just sign up for an inexpensive monthly plan, month by month.
Are there other good web hosts? Sure, but there are just a few solid web hosts we actually recommend to our own friends and family. These are “the ones to choose from”…
MidPhase – Reliable, Great Support, Unlimited Domains
AN Hosting – Think of this as MidPhase, same excellent service, but at a discount. Use coupon code ANHOST911 when you sign up and get 2 months of free hosting.
HostGator – Solid, reliable, great fast service – and a unique feature: you can sign up monthly, no commitments.
If you’re looking to pay up front for a full year of web hosting, then AN Hosting is the way to go Otherwise, HostGator is your best option.
In fact, HostGator is currently running a special promotion: less than $5 per month – with no long term commitments. You just can’t beat that for a solid, reliable web host.
Be sure to check out our web hosting review of HostGator, and give it a try yourself; we’re glad we did.
Install WordPress to run your blog
After you choose a reliable blog host , you’re ready to install your blog software. The most flexible choice available today is WordPress. It’s also free, and easy to setup and maintain.
Yes, this is a little more involved than setting up a free blog somewhere, but it’ll be well worth the effort when you get more web site traffic in a month then you would have gotten in a year on a Blogger.com blog.
Make a great first impression with a great theme for your blog
First impressions always matter. On the web, that’s even more important. A web visitor’s first impression about your site determines if he clicks away in the first 5 seconds, if he stays on to read what you have to say, and if he will ever come back again.
So it’s very important to put your best foot forward. Make your site interesting, distinctive, and engaging to your readers by using a great “theme”. WordPress themes are basically website designs that you can just download and enable for your WordPress blog.
Find the best theme for your blog, and when you have the resources, consider having a custom theme made for just your blog.
Configure WordPress and it’s plugins to get the most search engine traffic
What good is a blog if nobody is visiting? One of the great advantages of WordPress is the vast array of options to make your blog very yummy to the search engines. This is all about understanding what Google wants and giving it to them in the way they want it. Simple.
The most powerful SEO trick of all: “work with Google to give them what they want instead of trying to trick them”.
Make your blog welcoming and engaging to every reader
To make your visitors stick around and come back for more – day after day – use the power of WordPress and make your blog fun, engaging, and interactive.
Use polls to get readers involved and ask their opinion. Feature the latest posts and comments. Show off your most popular articles. Get readers truly involved by getting them to comment on your posts.
Write your first post
OK, at this point you’ve chosen THE best niche for you, you’ve become very familiar with that niche and it’s most popular sites, and you’re basically what could be considered an “authority” on your topic.
So now is the time for that all important first blog post
Off the top of your head, make a quick list of all the issues in your niche that people care about. What problems do they have, what questions do they have? What keeps them up at night?
Now pick ANY one of these and write a quick article on it. This “article” can be just a simple Top 10 list, with a supporting sentence of two for each bullet. That’s it!
Get feedback
Get this first article out there and see what people think. Email it to your family and friends, and ask them to help you make it better.
All the planning in the world is no substitute for Action. It’s time to go forth and do those good and powerful things.
Set up your RSS feed
Not long ago, RSS was the domain of the super-geeky. But today, millions of mainstream internet users are subscribing to RSS vibes every day.
Get your blog set up with full blown RSS support by setting up a free account with FeedBurner. They’ll pull a feed from your blog, make it pretty so everyone can actually read it, and they’ll even give you accurate stats on your readers. Yes, it is nice to know if anyone is actually subscribed to your feed.
WordPress also has a simple plugin that you can enable to support your shiny new FeedBurner RSS feed service.
Register your new blog with the top website and blog directories
Once you have a few posts on your blog, it’s time to start getting the word out. Search engines want to see links coming back to your site. Those links show that people other than just you consider your site to be important.
Well, at first you have no links. So you have to start somewhere. One of the best places to start is the endless list of web site directories and now blog directories which are just begging to give you a free link.
Here are a few to get you started: BlogCatalog, Blog Flux, and the Connected Internet Directory. DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory are also very important, but your submission to them is considered just a “suggestion”, and you may never hear back or get included.
Blog Catalog has turned into a social community of bloggers, which makes it significantly more valuable than a regular blog directory, largely because of the relationships you can forge there.
Promote! Social Media, Internet Press Releases, and more
If you don’t tell people about your new site, they’ll never know about it! Stop hoping someone will accidentally stumble upon your site. Take matters into your own hands and get the word out there!
It’s never been this easy to promote a brand new site, and to explosively grow your traffic and readership.
Social Media – Digg, Netscape, Stumble Upon, and more
Did you just publish a great article on your site? Let people know! Social media provides a great way to share your stories with others who WANT to know about it.
Post your great article to Digg, Netscape, and Stumble Upon. But tread with caution. Don’t “spam” these sites with everything you write.
To be truly successful, it’s VERY important to follow the rules and participate in these communities.
There are even some great tools like Web2Submitter to automate the process and submit your stories to tens of social media sites! This means you save countless hours AND actually get your story out to dozens of sites instead of just one.
Check out this video to see how to automate this process with Web2Submitter.
Article Marketing – Establish yourself as an expert by publishing your articles
Time to get more visibility for your hard work. Article directories take your articles and provide them to the countless webmasters and eZine publishers that need what you have: good, useful, and informative content.
You’ve already spent the time and written your excellent articles for your blog. Now publish those articles on the top 10 article directories and get lots more readers coming to your website.
This is the first article in the “How to Start a Blog and Make Money Online” series. Be sure to subscribe by RSS or email so you don’t miss the follow-up articles, with all the juicy details.
Then check out the Top 10 Must Have WordPress Plugins Every Serious Blogger Should Know About
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Tags: article marketing, BlogCatalog, DMOZ, make money online, social media, start a blog, web hosting review, wordpress, Yahoo Directory
35 comments ↓
Great article. I sure wish I had seen this BEFORE I started blogging. Would have saved me a lot of time!
Thanks Ed, that really means a lot.
Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer
Awesome post to get someone off on the right foot with blogging! I know that if I was going to start over again from scratch, I’d love to have this as a resource.
nice article – thanks for the tips!
I agree with Edward and Aaron. It saves a lot of time if someone follows what you write here. I learn many of the wisdom here only after painful experiences (and a lot of time).
This is a great post to get new bloggers pointed in the right direction.
Taking action I find is the one to stay focused on as you learn and keep moving.
Great tips. I would suggest that prospective bloggers run their niche through wordze or keyword tracker to find keyword clusters they can focus their blog and blog entries on. It helps having a nice “steady stream” of Search Engine traffic as a bedrock while they are building their blog’s “exponential” traffic through linkbaiting, social media marketing, and viral strategies.
I would stay away from ezine, I have written a couple articles and instead of my pages showing up in organic searches, ezines page would “get the credit”, so I lost out on traffic from my own content.
Also, if you are going to post to Netscape, do it in the early morning, thats when everyone is reading the news.
Hey Chris,
Great point on that. You definitely want to get “Google unique content credit” for the stuff you put out.
We’ve found that as you post to your blog regularly and increase in popularity, Google caches your site more and more frequently.
AdSense also helps here, because AdSense caches your site immediately after you make ANY changes to a post (to serve up the best ads) – and Google shares a cache with AdSense I believe.
Anyway, as your site gets more popular, Google scans it more frequently, so it’s not a big issues.
Either way, you might post to your blog first, then social media promote the same day. A day or two later you should be ok with eZines and other article distribution places.
Have an awesome day!
Dan & Jennifer
This is nice article guiding new bloggers and who are interested in getting started with blogging, as iam new to bloging and always look for new article coming my way, good addition to my knowledge.
Thanks
You can also use revenue sharing sites like http://www.mediaflix.net that allow you to enter your adsense id and share the profit 50/50 for submitted content.
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Hi. this certainly a great post. I’ve learn a lot today here and will improve my blog further. If you have any advise, I will be delighted to hear from you.
[...] you set up and start your new blog, one of the most important configuration decisions you make is whether to give these readers full [...]
this is one of the most helpful posts on blogging i’ve read….been following these steps and everything is going smooth….looking forward to more posts!
This is great info for someone like me new at Blogging. This will save me a lot of time and effort. Thanks for this article.
I enjoy writing and do on myspace but would like to make a way to make a little extra income so that no matter what I never have to choice between the water bill and groceries. The economy has started to worry me as well as I’m sure millions of others. This bloggin idea is great and if you have children like myself may help cut down on babysitter cost and gas which isn’t cheap! I do have a quick question-I want to start a blog but I’d like to write about many different things and not just one certain topic. Earlier (I may have totally misunderstood) but it sounded like you were saying to pick one topic (niche?) and write about it. Any other tips, suggestions, etc would be greatly appreciated. Mahalo and great blog I enjoyed it very much and plan on reading more. Good luck in your future blogs and GOD Bless
(Aloha and Mahalo from Hawaii)
Plse help me to get money thru wordpress, online blogging
I’m thinking about starting a blog & i found your info to be informative and interesting. However one of the main things an “old fart” & entrepreneur like me wants to be able to understand you didn’t answer, and that is How does one get paid for blogging & by whom?
It’s know the money may be unlimited, but what is an average amount, for what frequency?
thanks Bilal Allen
[...] also stumbled across a blog listing the 10 easy steps to making money blogging. It hits some interesting points on mechanics and workflow, but as I read it I kept thinking about [...]
Just used these instructions to the T. Awesome rundown man…
The idea of making money while you sleep is often a myth. Yeah, you’re right, you could do it — but only after you’ve set-up the system. This takes time, skills and practice.
Once you get past the learning curve, making money online using that system should be easy!
Nice article, I should start a blog to promote my new ebook.
Truly informative on Blogging – Its been long i have been trying to get on with Blogging – The article has given me some kind of insight and also a temptation to start without wasting any furhter time
You offer a lot of information and knowledge to those starting out new to making money line through using blogs. The links and advice certainly go a long way to help people get started out on the right foot. Thanks so much for sharing your experience with us!
The truth is my husband pisses me off somedays, my son is a pain in the rear with his typical teenage stuff, sisters and I fight and love each other like school kids and I have a lot to talk about. I’m rolling up my sleves and cracking my fingers. Ahhh there…. here I am ready to to just talk and talk and talk oh and most of all I find my life a comedy. So why not start a blog. Hell my family should be on TV. LOL
TOSSING THIS OUT!!! Let me know if anyone can hear me……:)
Good info, I am about to begin blogging. Hope to find good use of my time. Thank you for the suggestions.
This is a fantastic post. But… don’t give away too much information… lol… as I just started a blog offering to build a highly optimized blog for the first few visitors to my site. This is my way to sort of ‘pay it forward’ for all the help I got when first starting out. Anyway, have a great day.
Niching yourself is one key to success. I see some people try and start by tackling too broad of a market. There are some general markets that are very competitive. Ranking for keywords in those markets is next to near impossible. Try picking a more focused niche where there is less competition unless you have a million dollar marketing budget.
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
Hi Allen – the answer is “that really depends”. Remember that starting a blog is step 1. Step 2 is creating good content (writing useful stuff) that people actually want to read, on a regular basis (say 2+ times per week). After a while people will actually start coming to your site to consume more of your great stuff (your helpful articles). Only then do you have something that can be monetized.
Basically staring a blog is more like an easy way to start your own business – it does take some work and patience, even though some people make it out to be a magic money machine. But if you follow our advice above you’ll be writing on a topic that you’re passionate about so it’s not a hassle like going to work is for most people.
Once you start getting visitors to your site, you there are many ways to monetize, from Google AdSense to affiliate offers, to direct advertisers. But all that depends on writing good stuff regularly so people start coming regularly and sending their friends.
Get the details on how to actually make money with your blog, in this article we published recently:
“How to REALLY Make Money Online with Your Blog – Passive Income 101“
LOL, exactly! If you’ve got lemons, make lomonade.
— Dan
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