Profit Financially From Blogging In 9 Simple Strategic Steps, For Beginners

 9 Steps To Make Monetary Profit From Blogging As A Beginner

Do you have a strategic plan of actions to financially profit from blogging? For a beginner, blogging for passion, the question would be “can I make money blogging?” or “how do you make money blogging for free?” A lot of bloggers got into blogging as a medium to promote their networking businesses and generate more leads and sales. However, for new bloggers and those currently looking to nose-dive into blogging, the common question is “what are the ways to make money from blogging”. Read on to how to learn how any beginner, or anyone at all, can profit financially from blogging in 9 simple strategic steps.

Profit Blogging Step 1:Pursue Your Passion First (Profit From Blogging Will Follow)

Most bloggers, blog on their area of their passion, and they’d do it even without being paid. That’s good but if you learn how to make money blogging your passion, you can keep your passion alive – stay longer and happy blogging.

To make financial profit from blogging, it is important that you ensure to reduce what needs to be learned  – take the path of least learning curve and choose to blog on familiar topics that  you already know about or are passionate to learn more about, so that it would not need too much time to learn new things while struggling to become better at promoting and marketing through your blog.

Determine where your knowledge, skills and passion meet and take it from there  – that should be your base with blogging your passion. Start your own profitable blog based on your knowledge, passion and interest. Because you’ll be learning the ropes of blogging and how to market online, starting out with a subject you feel someone else is making a killing in but you know nothing about will simply increase your learning and earning curve, and so delay your timeline to make your first internet income from blogging. With so many competing websites, and because your main tool for generating sales and profit from blogging is your words, you should endeavour to put up your best contents if you must attract the people who will buy from you whenever you have a product to promote.

There’s a market for largely any and everything under the sun, so there’s no need to want to imitate someone else or believe that your own knowledge and skills areas are not profitable. You do not have to blog the exact, same topic your friend is blogging on – blog on your passion, and you’d be surprised there are people waiting to read your blog.  If you have talent in cooking and love cooking, why not blog about food, teach about how to make those yummy cuisines. If you love fashion, blog about fashion. Whatever your passion is, if you learn how to market online, you’ll definitely find buyers for that which you have to offer.

Internet marketing is simply a business model and vehicle to drive any business type to profits, using blogging as a means. Whatever business type, the same online marketing methods would drive them. So, quit trying to follow someone else’s passion – yours will do well and you’ll be able to make money from it.

Warning: Even though you want to make money blogging, if you are blogging on what you do not enjoy or have interest or passion in, you will burn out sooner or later and would have wasted some time and efforts. Blogging is not a get rich quick scheme, it may take a while (4-6 months on average) before you start seeing any significant income, that is if you know what you are doing and are consistently taking action.  Passion is a strong motivation to keep at it before the profits start rolling in. Why not start now to pursue your passion.

*Video below is a wonderful  and soul inspiring rendition of the poem: ‘Pursue Your Passion’ by Kirk.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVT-Quxd2PE[/youtube]

Profit Blogging Step 2: Dig Deep And Go Narrow – Find ‘the Right Audience’ To Serve With Your Blogging

Are the readers you currently attract the type of people who are likely to be interested and buy what you offer (back-end)? You need to have a good mix, at least majority of your readers should be the people who are reading to find solutions from your suggestions and recommendations.

In order to profit from blogging, you must be willing and ready to work it out. Find a need (by a large number of people) that you can fill using what you know or what you are interested and learning or what you are talented in or what you already have skills in. Then fill that need. The best way to position yourself to make money from blogging is to target a specific sub-market within your interest area. Dig deeper but go narrow – find a SPECIFIC market niche.

There are a whole lot of sub-categories and sub-topics within the area that your knowledge and skills are best. Not all of them would make you money blogging for business, or equally profitable.

Is your foot in a profitable right market? Are you blogging on your most sellable passion?

If you have already started blogging, have you checked the feasibility of the market that you are already in, based on the market demand and level of saturation by suppliers (other bloggers/ marketers)? Perhaps, you should do that soon –it’s always better late than never (to reposition in the right market). If you are just starting out, you need to do a market research to know where the money is within your chosen passion. That’s ‘the right audience’.

You need to dig deep into your field, industry or market of interest to find the sub-market that has the potential to generate significant sales (and profit). A simple online market research using key phrases (also known as keywords) will expose the sub-markets with high demand and low competition. When your market research shows you profitable demographics within the larger market of your interest, stay there– focus narrowly on a specific sub-market. In trying to capture an entire general fat loss market (for example), you’d not be getting anyone’s interest. People look for the specifics that solve their specific problem. If for example you focus on fat loss for obese kids, you’d find people interested customers willing to buy.

Profit Blogging Step 3: Build a List of Targeted Audience of Blog Readers and Start Teaching (First) In Order to Profit From Blogging

Blogging is like the business of teaching and educating, and selling knowledge based products in the process. If you want to blog and interested to profit from blogging, you have to love teaching what you know, are learning or experiencing (in life or business) or have experienced. Someone, somewhere is looking for that, to make their own life better, and avoid the mistakes you have made to get where you are/ be like you.

Think of this – what does Oprah do? Oprah simply talks about topics that solve her viewers problems; she shares here experience; Oprah teaches her audience what she’s doing that is working for her; she tells of the books she is reading or has read – and her audience just follow every of her recommendations. That is how she makes money. Oprah is not the only talk show host out there but she makes a lot more money than the others. However, the other talk show hosts also have their own raving fans, and make money from teaching them and sharing information with them – the market is big enough for every player. Blogging is just like that and to profit from blogging, you have to build your own audience (reader base). You can be the Oprah of your own blog audience, giving away free useful information while building your profitable business in a similar model as Oprah’s. There are people out there who want to read about what you know – they want to learn from you. Don’t hold back – give, it will come back to you in good measures, running over sooner than you can imagine. But capture your fans (readers) list always.

Do you know that doing a business without having a list of potential buyers is like living a life without insurance – that means any day your business crashes or your money-bank disappears overnight (no one prays for that, but s***t happens, they say), you’d have to start all over again (if you are still motivated enough) or forever remain down under (surrender). However, if you have a list of people who are interested in what you do, you can easily CONTINUE marketing to them, and making sales (money) without stop. If you want to profit from blogging continuously (today and in the future), you should arm yourself with your own list, unless you are a glutton for suffering.

Click to read my post on how to build a profit pulling email list from scratch.

Profit Blogging Step 4: Connect Sellers to Buyers – Become an Affiliate Marketer

Many product creators, manufacturers and shopping sites (like Amazon) are looking for sales representatives. The 21^st century sales representative does his business of getting leads and prospects online. Online salesmen are known as affiliates.

You can find lots of product and service creators or providers (within your subject area) who are looking for affiliates – signup with them, for the products that you think would benefit your readers, and that they’ll want. Places to start with, when looking for affiliate products to promote, include ClickBank.Com, Amazon.Com (amazon associates), CommissionJunction.Com, PayDotCom.Com. Be sure to also setup a payment account with PayPal where you will receive payments for affiliate products you sell.

Profit Blogging Step 5: Connect Buyers to Sellers – Recommend Useful Quality Products to Your Audience

There are many ways to generate extra streams of income, online or offline. Network marketing, direct marketing and the general home business industry used to be the most popular method for anyone looking for ways to make extra money. One thing that is common with these methods is promoting or selling Other People’s Products (OPP). With the increase in the popularity of the internet and online shopping, blogging has proven as one of the ways that people can make extra income streams, part time or full time.

People usually start the buying process from researching the search engines for websites and blogs that have useful additional information regarding a product or service they are interested in. Many bloggers are making money from using blogging as a medium to educate prospective buyers on product reviews, causes and effects, problem solutions, price comparisons, suppliers and more. How you can make money here is by finding a quality provider that has an affiliate program with commissions offering, so that they can recommend that product to their readers.

This you do by recommending quality products of product creators to the people who read your blog posts and emails. There would be lots of desperate buyers among your readers, who if they like and trust you, the products you recommend, from the sources you recommend.

It’s important that while you write on the topics that are of interest to you, you should also research what your target readers (and prospective customers) are reading elsewhere and what they would like to read most.

A blog can be likened to a newspaper or magazine publishing – the publishers educate the readers on topics of the readers’ interests and make money from the advertisements within the pages of their papers.

For a beginner who is blogging his/ her passion, you may think that some of the top blogs that you love and are following (their steps) write only “how to” contents on their blogs and do not sell anything. Have you ever thought how they make the lots of money they talk about on their blogs? Affiliate marketing is one of them. If you are on their lists, you’d have got loads of those promotions of new launch products – that is it – they promote to the people who subscribe to their blogs and they also promote through articles they write in article directories. As they say, they list is where the money is and so most top bloggers use the front end (blog) to “convince” first time readers that they know what they are talking about, and encourage them to subscribe to their blogs to get even more information by email.

Profit Blogging Step 6: Advertise on Your Blog – A Make Money Blogging With Banners and Text Ads

Google Adsense and other advertisements are the other ways that bloggers make extra (money) profit from blogging their passions so that they have enough motivation to keep at blogging.

Although you’ll observe that some of your favourite bloggers do not have any form of advertisements on their blogs, some have banners on their sidebars, some even have advert spaces for sale (just like magazines and newspapers). However, many bloggers build minisites, apart from their personal blogs that everyone knows them with. These minisites are usually in various markets/ areas that they have researched to find profitable. It is on these sites that they put up Google Adsense and other forms of advertisements.

Lesson: Build mini-sites (money sites or money trees) to drive affiliate sales and generate extra income through clickbank, Amazon affiliate products and other similar affiliate networks. Also create adsense sites.

Profit Blogging Step 7: Offer Consulting and Blogging Services to Offline Local Offline Businesses

Here’s another way that you can make extra (money) profit from blogging. This works by offering your blogging knowledge and skills for a fee to local businesses in your area. You can make money from offline local businesses just by doing what you already have fun doing at your blog. Imagine if you get 5 or more businesses on retainership for blogging services of any kind (as much as you can have time to do well); with careful time management and planning, you would be able to make more internet income from your blogging.

Find out what local businesses in your area that you can help with your blogging skills, as an extra income stream.

Profit Blogging Step 8: Join A Network Marketing Business – Make Money Blogging About Your Business Opportunity

Diversification of  income generation streams is the main key to make money and profit from blogging and network marketing is one of the most popular “other business” of many successful bloggers.  Many bloggers are also involved in network marketing. In fact a large percentage of them came into blogging while looking for ways to find new leads and prospects online for their Network Marketing business. You’ll find that some bloggers have a “work with me” page where they tell you a bit about the other businesses they are in. Some bloggers, at some point, mention their network marketing businesses to their subscribers. David Wood is one blogger who is primarily a Network Marketer, and there are lots of others like him.

Profit Blogging Step 9: Blog on a Self-Hosted Blogging Platform – Make More Profit From Blogging Without Fear Of Losing Your Blog Overnight

Although there are a lot of bloggers making money blogging for passion, using free blogging platforms (such as Blogger aka Blogspot), there are stories of many bloggers who woke up one day only to discover that their once regular source of extra internet income (for months or years) has been swept off their feet – just like that, overnight!

These happen because the hosting company that provide the free platforms have Terms of Use for their platforms, which limit the level of monetization you can have on your business blog. Therefore, in order to avoid this, you should consider hosting your blog yourself on WordPress.Org, so that you and only you (as the Landlord) will have total control over what you want to do on it, and sleeping well every night without fear of losing your money site any time suddenly. Setting up a self-hosted blog is a safe proof strategic decision you must make if you really want to profit from blogging.

[BONUS] Profit Blogging Step 10: Sell Your Services For Money

Provide your blogging skills in part or in whole as a service to other bloggers, internet marketers or offline businesses. You can provide freelance writing services, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) service, link building services, blog promotion services – just think of anything you can do and already do with your blog, and do competently and also have a passion in.

There are a lot of online work from home freelance jobs via websites such as oDesk, eLance, Fiverr and a host of others. Super affiliate, Lynn Terry has written a detailed post about this on her blog, based on her teenage son’s recent success with getting an online work from home job and graduating from that to starting his own online business. You can read about that here: online jobs you can work from home – opportunities.

Conclusion and Next Steps…

There you have it – how to profit financially from blogging in 9 simple strategic steps. Although it all sounds so simple, blogging generally is not a get rich quick endeavour. Not at all. If your passion for blogging/ teaching, transparency, honesty in your recommendations, and empathy for your audience does not show through your contents, you may just pass as one of those bloggers. You should be aiming to be one of the successful bloggers with a raving fan. Look at this – Oprah makes a whole lot of money from talking and yet her die-hard fans swallow every single recommendation she makes – hook, line and sinker.

As you can see, making profit from blogging is not made at the front end, but at the various backends, and with a strategic monetization plan, you can bring all these passive income ideas to live.

If your readers would be your source of income, you should stake your credibility and give them the very best out there. Never ever recommend a product just because the commission sounds cool – your reputation is at stake and if a few who buy make negative comments about the product not meeting expectations, you stand a chance of loosing all your hard earned traffic of readers.

Key Take Aways On Making Money Blogging From Your Passion

In this post, you’d have found out that successful bloggers build more than one income streams – marketing to their lists (at the backend), article marketing (to get traffic and sales), affiliate marketing (selling other people’s products), network marketing, adsense blogging, sale of own products etc – to make money. All these kinds of marketing are centered around blogging and internet marketing – no one single method is enough.

Another take away is that for one to be truly making financial profit from blogging , you have to be a master at one of those many money making methods, that is why some bloggers are primarily affiliate marketers, others are primarily network marketers. The one you want to be known with (for branding purpose) is the one you teach most on your blog – even though you do the others also at the backend.

How would you know where to focus as primary income stream? FOCUS is an acronym for Focus On One Course Until Successful. An advice is to start with one profit blogging method and master it – see real results (money) so that you would have been skilled at doing the tasks faster – then take another chunk/ method along, master it, see real money results then take another. At some point when you get more skillful and see big results, you may need to outsource some in order to try out others. As you find you balance and method of making money online where you are passionate about, your blog will keep evolving.

Next Steps for You to Take Action

Now where do you start from, especially if you’re just starting out and want to start making money quickly online?

My advice is to learn it from people who have already achieved what you’re looking for. In this post, you’d see banners of some of the best internet and affiliate marketing courses as well as income blogging courses. Get any one or two of this courses and start implementing right away.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post and will implement the above 9 strategic steps to financially profit from blogging so that you can have enough motivation to fuel your blogging passion. Are you a veteran blogger, I’d love to hear your own methods of generating income from blogging.

Did you enjoy reading this post? If so your friends can also benefit from reading it – share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg etc

Yours in Building a Profitable Blogging Empire,

Stella

 P.S.: Zero to Profits Resources – If you’d like to know some good resources that have helped many, including me, to go from zero to profits, I suggest you go see the resources mentioned on this page: best internet affiliate marketing online courses.