“Do people actually make money from blogging?”

This post is coming to you live from Puerto Plata. The resort that I’m at is pretty lively in the evening time. As you may know, after a few drinks everyone becomes best friends by the bar. Every night I find myself hanging out by the beach bar and meeting interesting characters.

When you’re meeting new people there’s the standard questions that you usually get. Where are you from? What do you do?

Asking someone what they do is fairly common in our society. At most parties it’s often the first question asked. It’s pretty annoying to be honest.

I usually say something ridiculous for the fun of it. I’ll often say that I’m unemployed or I’ll make something up. I told one couple how I ran a personal finance blog.

Once I managed to explain what a personal finance blog was I was hit with an instant question:

“Do people actually make money blogging?”

Usually when someone thinks of a blog they like associate it with a celebrity gossip site or some useless personal site on the life of your pet dog. Over the years, many blogs have been sold for millions and bloggers have gained high amounts of exposure in other forms of media.

People actually do make money from blogging. I’ve met many bloggers that do it full-time and make far more money than they did in their previous career.

How do people make money from blogging?

Promoting products.

Promoting products is pretty standard on personal finance blogs. You can promote anything from bank accounts to credit cards to online dating services to the products of your friends. When you promote a product you often earn a commission on every purchase that comes from your site. If you have a decent reader base or a loyal base, you can easily promote new products that you feel would benefit them.

The obvious caveat with promoting products is that you might be tempted with promoting something that you don’t care for just because of the financial incentive. This is where those that want to make money from blogging need to be careful.

What do you promote to your readers?

Freelance writing.

There’s a reason that I wrote a detailed piece on how to find a freelance writing gig. I’ve been doing freelance writing for almost two years now. Writing articles for other bloggers is a steady source of income for anyone that wants to earn money from blogging.

The main benefit to freelance writing is that you can focus your energy by writing on a topic that you’re passionate about and not worry about the design or the backend stuff. The setback is that you get paid per article and don’t have the opportunity to create passive income through Adsense or affiliate marketing.

Launching products.

Launching information products online seems to be a booming business. Many bloggers (myself included) have launched a product or at the very least considered doing so.

When you launch a product you’re in charge of everything and have the potential to earn steady income. The challenging part is trying to convince readers to actually spend money on your product.

Advertising.

There are many ways to make money through advertising on blogs. You can sell text links or banner ads for a flat monthly rate. This is a common option because it’s steady money and only requires you to place an ad in the sidebar.

Then you can twist things around and make money from advertising by setting up deals for other bloggers. You make the connection between the advertiser and the blogger. When the money goes through you take a commission for yourself.

Those are a few of the ways that I’ve seen my blogging peers make money through blogging. I’m not going to turn this into another blog about blogging post. I just wanted to address how people make money blogging for those that are interested in starting an online business.

Did you know that you can actually make money from blogging?

Despite having over 50 rough drafts ready to turn into a post I had a bit of a problem publishing daily posts this week. With the new college semester in full swing I’m really going to have to take an honest look at my posting schedule. Do not worry I will address this manner soon. For today I wanted to write about what I learned about writing for a blog and what other new bloggers can do to keep their writing consistent:

Write every single day. Yes you must write every single day. This doesn’t mean you have to publish an article everyday. Believe me if you publish something for the sake of publishing your readers will let you know it sucks (happened to me a few times).

You dread writing every single day? Then maybe writing isn’t your thing. Maybe you could still run a blog by outsource your writing to others.

Write for readers. Write in a way that another human being would actually read your article and make sense of it. Don’t throw a bunch of keywords together hoping that the search engines will pick up your articles and you will lots of money.

Make rough notes. I almost never begin writing a post without at least having a general idea of what will be included in the article. Kind of like writing an essay, I’m sure you at least attempt to write a rough copy before working on your final draft (unless of course it’s a last minute all nighter).

Keep track of everything. Whenever an idea pops into your head, write it down immediately. I don’t care if you use lipstick on a napkin. Write it down. For me my iPhone (Evernote) helps but nothing wrong with the classic pen and paper in your pocket.

Write about stuff other people care about. You can write the best article about Brooke Hogan’s new cd but just like the album nobody will ever check it out.

Learn to accept other voices. Sometimes either when I need a break or when I simply want to have another voice here at Studenomics I accept guest posts. In my opinion I find it beneficial to allow your readers to read another opinion. Another benefit of guest posts is that there are likely many topics in your niche that you need to learn more about and as do your readers. This is where a guest writer fills the void.

Embraces batch writing. I’m still working on improving my batch writing. I can make notes for a bunch of articles but the difficult part is putting together a batch of articles that are ready to publish.

What is batch writing? Whenever I think of a general idea I will then brain storm all of the different possible article topics that can come from it. The goal is to end up with at least 3 solid article concepts from the one idea. There is no hard fast rule and I’m sure that every “internet millionaire extraordinaire” has their own theory on this.

Alright guys that’s what I have learned about writing for a blog. What have you learned?

photo: voxeros

Yesterday I celebrated my 6 months of running Studenomics, so today it would only be appropriate if I showed you guys how I started this blog and how you could start your own personal finance blog. I often receive posts/emails that are very interesting and thought provoking from readers that surprisingly don’t run their own personal finance blog. In 3 easy steps I will show you guys how to start your own personal finance blog and hopefully some of you will try it out.

Step 1: Decide on a blog name

There are pretty much two ways you could go when deciding on your blog name. You could decide on a name that would best represent your brand/a brand name. This is exactly what I did, I thought of a name for a LONG time until I came up with a blog name that I felt would catch on. A second option is to make your blog name full of keywords. For example, I could have made the name of this blog “Student Personal Finance” or “College Personal Finance” but honestly I do not care because I find those names to be completely boring. I chose to go with a blog name that would be catchy and would summarize the theme of my blog without any keywords.

There really is no magic answer when it comes to thinking of a blog name. The goal is to think of blog name that would attract your target audience and something that you would be proud of. I would not be proud of my blog name if it was “StudentPersonalFinanceInformation.com” but some people don’t care and they only focus on the search engine benefits.

Step 2: Decide where/how you will host your blog

You could get a free blog through Blogger.com or many other free blog hosting services. The only problem is that it kills your credibility when you have a sub domain and most of the free services don’t allow you to put ads on your site. Hence you will never earn a penny off your site nor will it be taken seriously. Obviously there are exceptions to this rule but I personally think it is beneficial to get your own domain. Since I only focus on providing high quality advice that does not involve saving every penny I urge all of you to get your own domain when you start a blog.

There are many low cost options for registering your domain, such as GoDaddy or BlueHost or Top Web Hosting. Please keep in mind that registering a domain and hosting a domain are not the same thing. I registered and hosted my domain through BlueHost but some will not have positive things to say about the company. I honestly have had no issues with them in the last 6 months so I have no problem recommending them to all of you.

Registering a domain is really cheap and usually about $10 a year. Hosting on the other hand can be a bit more expensive. when I signed up with BlueHost I agreed to pay about $7 a month and it came with a free domain registration. Some may say $7 a month is a big deal but honestly after a while you will easily start earning more than $7 a month. If you don’t plan on monetizing your site/placing any ads on it then it’s still worth it because for only $7 you have your very own domain name, your very own personal finance blog, and you can share your information with the whole online community.

Before you setup WordPress for your domain there is one final step

cPanel>Domain Manager this will in turn show you your domain that you have just registered. Click on the unassaigned domain name and…

Assign Domain>Click on “Add On”>Then choose a directory for your blog

What this does is it setups your domain so you could manage it through BlueHost and so you can create your directory where you can upload all of your plugins and files. This also allows you to use some of the services provided by BlueHost, such as creating your own email address on your domain and much more.

Step 3: Setup WordPress for your domain to turn into a blog

This is where a lot of people (including myself) get frustrated and fed up with the whole process.

cPanel>Scroll to Software/Services>Click on Fantastico De Luxe>Click on New Installation>Select your new domain under “Install on Domain”>Select a user name and password>click “Instal WordPress”

I know I summarized a whole process into a couple of words but believe me it is just that simple. If you click all of the correct buttons in that exact order you will setup WordPress, thus setting up your domain to be a blog!

Any time you want to edit your blog you go to http://www.yourdomain.com/wp-admin and type in your user name/password. If you are still interested in this whole personal finance blog thing then let the writing begin!

You don’t necessarily have to use the above information to start a personal finance blog but chances are you will want to if you read Studenomics and enjoy regularly sharing your thoughts on personal finance.

Please note that 100% credit for this article must be given to Dough Roller. It is his article on how to start a blog that helped me all the way through this process that was very new to me. Please feel free to contact me if you ever have any questions.

I know exactly what all of you are thinking: what does this new blogger know about making money off blogging or blogging in general? The answer is not much but 453x more than I did when I started Studenomics about 6 months ago. Speaking of that to celebrate my 6 months of running Studenomics, I will have a massive group project where I will write roughly 8-12 articles and have them posted here and on some of the top personal finance blogs. The project will be called the Summer of George, playing off the Seinfeld episode where George was meant to have a great summer but it never happened. Except in this case, the project will help you succeed and have the most productive summer ever. More details will be released within the next few weeks but back to the original topic.

I launched my new blogging section without formally introducing it to the readers of Studenomics. Right off the bat let me confess to you guys that I earn very little money off my blog and unlike other bloggers I want to write about blogging as a means to help you guys start a blog. I wanted to start a blog for the longest time but I never did because a certain barrier existed, I did not know how to start a blog or how to get a domain. Due to this reason I started a blog many months after I started writing articles in MS Word.

With my new blogging section I hope to show all of the twenty somethings out there how easy it is to actually start a blog and voice your opinions on a daily basis (believe me it can be therapeutic). I also hope to provide you with tips on how to avoid making the same mistakes that I have made and let me tell you that is a lot of mistakes.

I will also to try to provide general tips on search engine optimization, monetization, building traffic, and many other beginner topics. One thing I will not write about is how to make a living off blogging because I have not figured this out nor have 99% of the other bloggers out there. I plan to write about blogging about once a week and I will probably learn more from you than you will from me because of the nature of the blogging.

Here you have it guys the first of many new sections at Studenomics, blogging. Instead of having the first post be the standard introduction and what not I decided to jump right into things and show you some interesting points I picked up from a power point presentation I did the other week on blogging. Granted the students in attendance had to be there because it was apart of the participation grade and the topic was supposed to be diverse income streams but I just chose to discuss blogging. It’s funny how well you present when you are passionate about the subject as opposed to the typical college presentation. Anyways I wanted to list some of the interesting notes from the presentation.

- Pretty much every single student in attendance was surprised that people actually earn a decent income from blogging. I didn’t list any figures because bloggers can earn anywhere from $0.10 to $10,000 a month depending on many variables. I just wanted to show that there in fact are many full time bloggers working from home.

- The few people that did think an income could be earned from blogging figured that it would be easy. This wasn’t too much of a surprise for me because most young people I have talked to figure that working from home is easy in general.

- College students are so focused on finding an entry level position within a major company after their college graduation that they do not consider alternative career possibilities.

Patrick from Cash Money Life made an interesting comment on this by stating that the typical career choice is ingrained into most people from birth. Entrepreneurial endeavors are something many people just don’t think about, but I think it is important to create alternative income streams. Job security is not what it once was, and pensions and other benefits are constantly getting cut.

- Students were able to recognize “mainstream” bloggers like Perez Hilton but not reputable bloggers that discuss more than who Britney Spears is married to this week.