How To Blog For Money

Content is king for every website or blog. Yet, not many writers know what is engaging and attention grabbing content and how to create it.

Article Writing Tip #1: Keep it Simple, Error-free and Easy to Follow

Many writers fall prey to temptation. They end up writing heavy, boring stuff, full of big words and false claims. This is an absolute “No! No!” with most readers.

Instead, write simply. Avoid big words. Maintain flow. Bear in mind that a reader will be driven away if he has to check the dictionary every few minutes, because you gave in to the temptation of wanting to show off your language skills and ended up using big and bombastic words.

Also, ensure that your article is clean with few spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. Typos, spelling mistakes, grammatical and punctuation errors can be off-putting to readers. They may just surf away from your website or blog, never to return.

Some may even conclude that you can’t possibly know much, if you can’t even manage language.

Article Writing Tip #2: Write for the Reader

Many writers tend to write for their pleasure. They tend to select topics that interests them, oblivious of the reader’s taste and requirements.

This is a strategy, which will drive readers away instead of helping you retain them.

Instead write for the reader, putting yourself in his position, trying to understand what he is looking for when he visits your site rather than what you want him to read.

Article Writing Tip #3: Talk to the Reader, Instead of Talking Down to Him

Many writers assume a superior position and talk down to the reader instead of talking to them as an equal. This can be very irritating for many readers, who may be looking for additional information but that does not mean they lack knowledge or abilities.

While writing requires skills, writing in a way which will leave the readers satisfied and fulfilled requires even greater abilities. Always bear in mind that your first interaction with the reader has to be such that it will pave for many more in course of time.

Don’t pontificate. Don’t brag. Don’t use your blog to show off, advertise and blatantly promote products. Instead create user experiences, where your reader is an equal partner, who comes to your website to hear your views and share his experiences with you—the interaction of course being facilitated through your writings and his comments in your comments column.

Article Writing Tip #4 Don’t Plagiarize. Instead, Write Quality Content

Blogs and websites are like steam engines! You have to keep feeding them with content constantly to keep them at the top of search engines results.

When large amount of content is needed, there is a tendency to plagiarize or modify content marginally and pass it off as your own.

This approach may fill the pages but is self-defeating in the long run. Search engines like Google tend to penalize duplicate content. Thus, instead of ranking high, your content may be pushed to the bottom of the pile of huge piles of web content that gets created online on a daily basis.

Instead, create value for your readers. Write on things that would interest them. Provide information. Generate enough interest and curiosity to bring the reader back to your website time and again.

Article Writing Tip #5: Research! Research! And More Research!

Many writers believe that just because they know a subject fairly well, they no longer need to read or upgrade skills.

This is a fallacy.

The world around us is constantly evolving. New developments have been taking place at a phenomenal pace in every subject and every field.

Even if you are an expert, you need to update knowledge and skill sets from time to time. Otherwise, you will end up churning out the same content time and again under different headlines. This will not attract readers. Instead, it will drive them away to competitors who can provide unique and readable content.


Why high site speed:

Matt Cutts, Google’s head of anti-spam team, recently indicated to at Pubcon, a search marketing conference, the general direction in which the world’s most popular search engine was likely to go in 2010.

Speaking to Webpronews , he made two points. The New Year would see the rolling out of Google Caffeine, the company’s much-discussed new technology for indexing infrastructure. He also made the point that perhaps, time had come to reward the more efficient website owners, who had faster loading website and web pages.

Since, then site speed has come in for a lot of discussion.

What is high site speed:

From Google’s perspective of course, faster sites mean greater customer retention, and greater customer retention would translate into higher revenues through Google Adwords, which generates over 90 per cent of the company’s income.

However, having said that, it is also undeniable that a high site speed is also good for Internet users and the small businesses that Google supports. These are the small businesses that have websites on the Internet. As a search engine company which searches and indexes information on the Internet and as a major advertiser, Google helps these businesses increase their visibility, optimizing their marketing costs and assists them in tracking returns on investments.

From a user’s point of view, a high site speed is something that makes the Internet experience worthwhile.

Companies may spend millions on the back end of their businesses, but as far as the customer is concerned, as the end user, bulk of his time he spends at a website may be the time he spends staring at the screen, while he waits for all the components on the webpage to load.  These components include the images, style sheets, scripts, Flash etc.

Some web pages load slowly, others load faster. The speed itself may be dependent on  the contents of the page, the speed of the user’s computer and the very nature of the Internet connection itself, such as a dial-up or a broadband connection.

However, the average user himself is neither aware of these things nor is he even willing to apportion responsibility equally to whatever mars his Internet experience.

Instead, he would gravitate away from the site that loads slowly to those that load faster—thus rewarding those site owners who have a user-friendly website as compared to those who don’t.

Such natural selection already exists from the user’s end, but Google would also like to give weightage site speed while determining a webpage’s ranking on its search engines.

How important is high site speed:

Site owners cannot influence the speed of the user’s Internet connection. He also cannot possible decide which generation computer a user uses. However, what he can do is analyze the components that are on his website. This can be done in consultation with web designers or it can be done using several of the free and paid resources that are available online, including Google’s code for page speed  and Yahoo’s Yslow to run site speed tests.

What site owners also need to remember is that while site speed is going to be important, it will be one of the 200 factors that the Google spiders use while determining page rank. Hence, all changes must be made, bearing in mind that while site speed will matter, both from Google’s and user’s perspective, it will not be the sole factor which determines traffic to a website.

Seo industry veteran Aaron Wall’s Seo Book Suggestion Tool has been around for sometime. Unlike Google’s Adwords Keywords Tool, this tool, including Seo Book’s free keyword research tool, combines the strengths of several search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to provide you with a daily estimate of traffic generated by the term you are interested in, as well as related terms.

The net result is that Seo Book’s tools can provide you with the combined search results of several search engines for the targeted keyword you are researching and its synonyms, or it can provide the same information for one search engine at a time.

The combined traffic estimate is useful, convenient and time saving, as you can take an informed decision on your daily budgets that you may need to allocate if you decide to embark upon pay per click campaigns to drive targeted traffic to your website.

Seo Book Suggestion Tool is able to provide these functionalities as it has an interface with Woodtracker and UK’s Overture. It uses Google Trends for targeted keywords and Google Traffic Estimator to arrive at the daily cost for advertising for the terms in question

Additionally, it makes use of GoRank Seo Tools and Ontology Finder to check the top 1000 Google results for the term you are interested in, as well as its synonyms.

Like WordTracker, Seo Book offers both a paid and free keyword research tools.

Even though it is free, you have to register in order to use the free keyword research tool. Registration has been made a must after the free keyword research tool provider found that some users were scrapping information far too heavily.

Registration requires an opt-in, but it may be worthwhile, since Seo Book throws in freebies which the company claims is worth over $300. The freebies include the Seo Toolbar, a rank checker, video tutorials and an email guide to Seo basics.

Also, a calculator is available to calculate the value of your website—or that of the websites you may want to promote based on your keyword research using the paid and free keyword research tools available.

Both the Seo Toolbar and the Rank Checker have to be downloaded and installed. The former allows you to get an estimate of the traffic and ranking attracted by the websites indexed by the search engines. The latter, on the contrary, allows you to check the rank of your domain on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

In case you opt for the premium product, you get access to additional tools such as Website Health Check, Competitive Research Tool, a Duplicate Content Checker, a Hub Finder and access to the Seo Community.

However, these tools do not come cheap. They were priced at USD $300 a month at the time of writing, which the additional assurance that membership can be cancelled anytime.

While Google Adwords Keywords Tool is certainly a universally-used free keyword research tool, there are several other free keyword research tools like Wordtracker, which offer both paid and free keyword research tools. The difference between Wordtracker’s paid and free keyword research tools is basic. When you key in a keyword, keywords or key phrase into the search box, the free tool limits the search results to the top 100 suggestions for free users. The paid tool, on the contrary, generates 1000’s of search results, which could mean massive savings in terms of time and money.  Like the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, the Wordtracker also helps website owners and internet marketers find keywords and keyword phrases used by surfers relevant to their business or that of their client’s work. Yet, unlike the Google Adwords Keywords Tool, Wordtracker offers several additional features. First and foremost, the tool can be added to popular browser such as Internet Explorer and Firefox. This means that when you browse the Internet for information, products or services, Wordtracker will provide you with details related to the term you are searching.

Other features include the facility to save lists and access them through Wordttracker whenever you want, and the ability to import and export lists.

You can also check competition for the word you are interested on a specific search engine in one place rather having to go from search engine to search engine to find results specific to that search engine.

At the time of writing this blog, Wordtracker’s paid version was priced at US $329 per annum or US $59 per month. In terms of pound, annual subscription worked out to be ₤161 or while monthly subscription was ₤28 a month.

While the decision to pay for a free keyword research tool or opt for a paid one is personal, there are several free keyword research tools, which are available and can be used to find money-making keywords.

Google Adwords Keywords Tool

As the name indicates, Google Adwords Keywords Tool is Google’s research tool. This is primarily for advertisers who promote words using cost per click (CPC) advertising to gauge competition strength but it can also be used by a newbie.

This free keyword research tool provides two search options. You can key in descriptive words or phrases to find competition for the search terms you wish to promote including the name of your website. Alternatively, you can also find the keywords that are indexed by the google search engine spiders for a particular term.

To use this tool, key in a search word or phrase you want checked out, such as “how to blog for money”, “how to blog” or just “blog for money”. Check the “use synonym” box. Choose the descriptive words or phrase option, key in the captcha  and run the search.

The search will yield advertiser competition, local search volume for the month, and global monthly search volume. You can search for a broad, phrase or an exact match. The synonyms keyword feature will offer other similar keywords you can choose while finalizing the list of keywords you need to promote your website.

Additional information can be generated by using the Show/Hide Column option.If your intent is CPC, you may be more interested in the advertising position of a particular word and the cost involved in promoting these words.

As a newbie, your interest may be in discovering keywords with commerical potential, around which you may want to build your website.

You can also find year on year search volumes. In simple terms this column shows the pubkic interest in the term now as compared to the same period in the previous year. This information is useful for analyzing search trends for a set of words or phrase over a period of time. Hence, if the volume has grown over the year, it indicates the interest has not been momentary but has been sustained over a period of a year.

This free keyword research tool also allows you to track the highest number of searches seen for a set of words or a phrase. That allows you to gauge whether the trend is moving away or shifting in favor of the words you are interested in.

The Google Adwords Keywords Tool also allows you to search for keywords on a website. You can run a keyword search filling in the name of the website you are interested in into the search box. The website could be yours—or that of a competitor in the same sector, whose marketing success you wish to replicate.

In the good old days of the Internet, one had to input the list of keywords one after another into the search engines to manually estimate the commercial value of each of these words. The good news is that that has changed.

Today, there are loads of keyword research tools which allow you to speed up the research process. Some of these tools are priced. Others are free. 

The main difference between the priced and free keyword research tools is that the paid ones have several additional features which make it possible for you to search several parameters simultaneously, while the free keyword research tools may not allow you to do the same. Essentially, it means that paid keyword tools save time but cost money, while free tools are time-consuming but cost nothing.

The decision to use a free or a paid keyword research tool or a paid one depends on your budget, time and the level of commitment you have to creating money-making blogs. For instance, a newbie may be risk-averse and hence may want to gradually increase his investments. Others may be more willing to take risks. They may want to to pump in funds from the word get go, if they believe higher investments from the start would yield them higher returns. Also, some of you may set up a blog as a hobby.

You could be holding a job or may have other responsibilities that do not allow you to invest your time and energy totally into your endeavor. Hence, you may want to use free keyword research tools to start with, but graduate to paid ones once you are able to make some money from your blog. Whatever the decision, keywords research is a must and keyword research tools make the task easy.

You may have wondered why I have been insistent on keyword research preceding the registration of a domain. The answer is that if you decide on your keyword and then register your domain name, in that order, you could push up page rank with target keyword in url  too.

What this means is that if your research shows that there is demand for content on a subject, say, “How to Blog For Money”, then it makes imminent sense for you to include the keyword in the url too.

That way, you would be able to leverage not only what goes into your pages, namely SEO-rich web content, but also other places on your website.

Effectively, if you follow this route, you would be able to push up page rank with target keyword in url, the blog title, content heading as well as the web content itself.

Compare this with what your competitor could do. Let's call him Mike. Now assume Mike likes to see his name in the url. So he registers his domain as mike.com while you go on to register your domain with the keyword of your choice, say howtoblogformoney.net. In Mike's case, he would be able to have his target keyword in content, on his blog title and possibly, the page heading.

You, on the contrary, could do all of the things that Mike does—as well as enjoy the additional advantage of pushing up the page rank of your blog by having the target keyword in the url too.

To illustrate the point, I ran a search like any other searcher interested in learning about how to blog for money. I keyed in the terms, “how to blog for money” without the quote marks in the google search box.

I found that out of the 10 results thrown up by Google on page 1, (this is at the time of writing), two of the links had the keyword, howtoblogformoney in the url, while 8 did not have them.

Amongst the top three was Problogger, even though it did not have the search terms in the url, while two websites, with the keyword, howtoblogformoney, in their url ranked No 5 and No 8 respectively.

Of these, the No 5 position was held by a blog with blogspot, while this blog ranked No 8.

Now you may wonder why I would consider a Google page rank of No 8 worthy of even a passing mention, when your goal, like mine, is to wrangle the No 1 position.

The answer is that this rank was achieved within 14 days of the first blog post being made, without any other effort at promoting the blog!

Many webmasters argue that they do not optimize their website for one keyword. Instead their goal is to optimize it for several keywords. So having the target keyword in url is not as much a must as creating quality content.

For instance, someone who is targeting traffic seeking information on how to blog for money is likely to optimize their site not only for the keyword, howtoblogformoney, but also for related keywords such as howtoblog and blogformoney.

Hence, getting a leg-up for one's target keyword is not enough. Instead, the trick is to concentrate on creating keyword-rich content, instead of depending on a keyword-rich domain name to attract traffic.

There can be no argument about the fact that content is king on the Internet, may it be with surfers or with search engines. But having said that, there is no denying the fact that having your target keyword in url does give the small push to your big goal.  

Most people assume that registering a domain is the first step to setting up a blog.  Hence they find a registrar of domains or head for a hosting company which provides both hosting and registration service. They select a name they think sounds nice for their blog, check its availability and register it and get hosting service.

It is after this that they start thinking of content, traffic and customers.

Problem is that this approach does not work anymore.

The Internet has been around now for some time and the mountains of content has already been created and indexed by the search engines. Hence, if you were to try and create a website or a blog now which promotes a single word such as a blog or Psoriasis, you are bound to create web content that is likely to lie buried underneath tons of content churned out daily by millions of websites and blogs that populate the Internet.

Thus, the most attractive option available to late entrants to the Internet, who want their websites to be visible amidst the clutter of information available on every subject imaginable, is to consider the possibility of using long tail keywords.

What is a Long Tail Keyword

Long tail keywords, also know as broad keywords, are a combination of two words or more words, which a surfer may key into to a search engine’s search box. Thus, an example of a long tail word would be the words, “how to blog”, “blog for money” or “how to blog for money” instead of just the narrow term “blog”.

Similarly, you would be using long tail keywords when you search for “money-making blog”, “blogging for money” “make money online” or “Seo keyword research”. On the contrary, you would be searching for short tail keywords when you for search for narrow keywords like blog, blogs, blogging, money or keyword.

Long tail keyword is the coinage of Chris Anderson. He first used it to describe the strategy used by market-savvy marketers for building websites on combination phrases which faced low competition and brought in limited amount of traffic.

Since these words had low competition, it became possible for you to rank your websites high on the search engine pages as compared to the time, effort and money you would need to get the same ranking with the more-competitive short tail keywords.

Advantages of Using a Long Tail Keyword

Long tail keywords have evolved as part of the development of the Internet. By definition, they are aimed at attracting small traffic flows rather than large ones. Some may wonder why one would like to attract smaller number of visitors, when it is possible to use narrow keywords to attract larger number of surfers.

The answer is simple. The competition for narrow tail words is severe. It would be near impossible for a new entrant with a small advertising budget and limited knowledge of the Internet to create visibility easily, if he were to build his web content on narrow keywords.

When websites are build on long tail keywords, the content is focused and is tailored to meet the requirements of those who visit your website rather than cover a wide broad array of topics.

Long tail keywords also carry an added advantage. They convert into sales far more easily as compared to short tail keywords. Hence, if your intent is to make money out of your blog, and that too with small investment over a short time frame, then it would be better to do so by building a website on a long tail keyword.

I am sure that anyone who has a smattering of the Internet jargon is familiar with terms such as Google Adsense, Google Analytics, Keyword Research, Seo Keyword Research, Keyword Research Tools and other such stuff for creating income generating streams to their web properties, including a website and a blog.

So you may wonder why I would state categorically that keyword research is the first step to creating a blog for money.

The answer is simple.

Keyword research is the corner stone to creating a money-making blog, when your goal is to blog for money.

Let me illustrate this with a simple example.

You have heard of a friend’s friend, who created a website on “how to blog for money” and made a killing by selling the website for $ 1 million dollars. You have met this guy briefly. You know he is an ordinary fellow. Understandably, you are convinced that you can do what he did.

Hence you start the process of setting up your million-dollar website.

You begin your keyword research.

You google for the term “blog”, then “blog for money” and finally “how to blog for money” with the intent of understanding how people name their blogs.

The searches results are uninspiring. It seems people don’t know how to name their blogs!

So you consult a few friends, family members and meet your mentor, who has overseen your professional growth over the years. You think the name “Mindsport” sounds good. Hence you try the name out on a few friends. They hink it is great.

You decide on the blog title: “How to blog for Money” sounds good.

You check out the domains available for registration. You celebrate when you find that mindsport is available though with a dot info tag. You think about it. Your friends think that since your aim is to create an informative site, a dot info site would actually work best for you.

You agree. You register the domain name and you are set to go.

You read up books and ebooks on SEO keywords and SEO optimization. You even hire a SEO specialist to help you find good keywords using the best keyword tools available in the market. You turn to friends for keyword suggestion and they share their keyword research findings with you.

Armed with this list of keywords, you write out the content. You now bring in a friend whose website gets 1,000 hits a day and get him to go over your content. He checks double checks your keyword research method and cross verifies the keyword density in your copy. He feels satisfied. Everything seems hunky-dory.

You publish the content, add a few ads and wait for the money to flow in…

You feel disappointed when that does not happen.

Now truly anxious, you key in the name of your website into the Google search box and feel crestfallen when your website is not on page 1 on any of the search engines for any of the search terms, “blog”, “blog for money” or “how to blog for money”.

Now terribly anxious, you manually start checking the search results, clicking page by page to discovery where your site is buried in the search pages. You cross the 1000 page mark and give up. Despite your very best attempts, neither your domain nor the urls on your page have made it to even the top 1000 pages.

You haul up your SEO expert. You curse your friends. You wonder what went wrong.

The answer is that your keyword research was poor. You didn’t do keyword research the right way before you set up your website.

(updated)

It’s amazing! According to Google Hot Trends, some of the top hot searches, at the time of writing of this post, are for the terms, how to blog, blog for money and how to blog for money.

Yet, there are very few websites on the Internet that exclusive teach how to blog, blog for money or how to blog for money, eventhough loads of web content exists, which includes content, amongst other things, on blog, blogging, how to blog, blog for money and ultimately how to blog for money.

Let me elaborate this just a little for those who are new to search terms, or keyword research, as it is known in the blogging parlance.

Try entering the words, “how to blog for money” in the Google search box without the quote marks. This is the kind of term that you would typically enter into the Google search box if you were looking for a guide to blogging, that would yeild you a decent if not fantastic income.

It may surprise you to know that the search term, how to blog for money, throws up 361,000,000 links, while blog for money and how to blog yeild 367,000,000 search results and 545,000,000 search results respectively.

These are a lot of links. You could argue that they include all pages on the world wide web which have the search words in the order searched rather than information that exactly matches the terms searched.
 
That’s true.

To address this issue, now try searching the three terms, how to blog, blog for money and how to blog for money enclosed in quote marks. The quote marks limit the search to the exact terms under search.

“How to blog” throws up 433,000 search links, “how to blog for money” shows 612,000 links, while “blog for money” still throws up an astounding 2,660,000 links.

Clearly, there is an appetite for information in general on blogging, but more so on the subject of how to blog, blog for money and how to blog for money.

Also, the search results show that people are looking for targetted information, if possible under one roof, a kind of one-stop, step-by-step guide to blog, blogging, how to blog, blog for money and how to blog for money.

It is to fill this gap that I created this blog.

Bulk of what I write here has been tried and tested, tested out by me on my journey to making a living off the Internet. Considering that my journey was not easy, this blog has also been created in the hope that it will ease the process for many others who would like to try their luck blogging.