Blogging 101

If blogging is an art, then, making money blogging is a fine art.

This is because people who are into blogging for money are the ones who are passionate entrepreneurs, carefully choosing words that would best speak to the readers needs, sentiments, wishes and desires. At the end of this blog I will share four powerful tips to build a successful online income through blogging.

Basically, money blogs were first introduced in the late 90's. They were created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since the web blogging inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of online residual income.

In the begginning you needed a website to have a legitimate blog. Today, you can host a blog for free at places like Blogger and WordPress. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge. Which makes making money on them all the more beautiful!

With the onset of blogging as an income industry, personal journaling shifted to information sharing for the increased web traffic and prospects it could bring. Although blogging is still very much about individuals and their lives, it has now become a major income producing force in the internet marketing industry. Everyone, from work at home moms, to down and out real estate agents, are turning to blogging for proits.

People are beginning to mine the depths of their lives experience to come up with crafty and edgy new ideas for online income generating blogs. From grandma's home made recipe for chicken fried steak, to dads secret to fixing that leaky faucet. Splash in a little adsense on an information blog, and presto you have the potential to generate some nice residual income.

If you are thinking of creating a blog for money, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the money making success stories online.

Here’s how:

1. Consider your audience

Consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them enough to buy from you. People usually buy to avoid pain or provide pleasure. Solve for one of those two and you are on your way to nice profits.

2. Pictures speaks a thousand words

With all the free photo sharing and graphic sharing sites out there, you should sprinkle in a good relevant photo or two throughout the blog. Remember, you're trying to stand out so brighten it up a little. Make it fun!

3. Avoid over hyperlinking

Blogging is a great way to lead people to your main site, or to another income generating stream. However, search engines won't like 20 hyperlinks in your site. It's confusing and disingenuine to the reader. So keep hyperlinks to five or less as a good rule of thumb.

4. Stay focused

There is nothing more annoying to a reader than to arrive at your site and feel like they have arrived at kindergarten class full of hyper active kiddos. Keep your message simple and straight forward. If you're going to divert, do it a small mini-series and then come back to the main theme.

That's a great start! Get out there and start reading some good blogs on a niche that you like. Once you have decided where you'd like to dive in...just do it. You don't learn how this all works by standing on the sidelines. Money blogging is not a spectator sport.

7 Steps to Amazing Income Potential Online

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BMW Concept Car - Flickr Photo

Much like this car above, most people just have a concept of what they would like to do. I say stop dreaming and start building (especially this car!) Below I will outline some of the best, easiest, and most successful steps to making substantial residual income online.

1. Research YOU!

What are you interested in? What are your hobbies, likes, dislikes? What do you do for a living? If you will spend some time up front exploring the depths of your own experience you will be light years ahead of most online wealth wannabees.

2. Research the Internet.

Once you have a particular niche in mind go to Google. Read some blogs, digital articles, and reviews on your topic. Look for something that's missing and then focus in on that area. Look to bring something new and relevant to the market. Think like an inventor!

3. Choose a list of keywords.

Use tools like Google's keyword tool, Yahoo's wordtracker. These tools can give you a great list of important words and terms that you should use when creating web page content. Successful internet businesses spend a majority of their time making sure they do this. If you want to win, you must do this step!

4. Write orginal content.

The search engines will be looking for orginal content on whatever niche you chose. The more you can set yourself apart, and do this frequently, the more income you will eventually make.

5. Increase your exposure.

Not in a nude kind of way, but let it all hang out! You have to get your articles published by sites like Ezine Articles, Web Wire, and many more if you want to begin to rank in the search engines. Each of these sites have great tutorials on what to do. Just go to Google and type in "article writing tips".

6. Try some pay per click.

First go to Google and watch some pay per click tutorials for free. You can also search YouTube for more free videos on this. Basically you pay Google a certain fee (say 15cents per click) to get your website on the first page under the sponsored links section. This can be costly if you don't know what you're doing, so get informed first.

7. Track your results.

If you do all of the above, the last thing to do is keep track of your posts, website traffic, and any other advertising. If you skip this most important step you will throw away a lot of money on things that don't work, because you won't know. <

In the end, be patient. Each one of these steps takes some time. But if you want to build a lasting residual income business online then you need to do this.

How This Recession Changed Real Estate and It's Agents.

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"Pushed by recession, millions make dramatic job changes." - USA Today July 31st, 2009

Flickr Photo

Location, Location....housing market crash.

It seems that over the last 12 months location has had little to do with the value of a person's real estate holdings. If anything the slogan has shifted to Lowball, Lowball, Lowball.

As a licensed real estate agent in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, I have had a lot of time (too much really) to reflect on real estate as a viable career. In particular in a second home and vacation home market in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. As I always tell people, "This isn't a have to kind of place. It's a want to."

Well, lately, people haven't wanted to. That has made it abundantly clear that I needed to start looking for alternative options for income. A friend mentioned internet marketing and the possibility of opening an online store. The thought hadn't really occured to me, but heck I knew a lot about it through my efforts to help my clients sell their homes online. So I decided to do some research.

What I found was pretty shocking. There were a lot of companies out there promising me that I could retire in one month on a six figure salary. Not bad in a huge economic crisis. However, after thorough due diligence most of these online income opportuinties turned out to be just empty promises. Until I found My Internet Business (now known as Your Net Biz).

I knew enough about the psychology of selling to ensure that I didn't fall prey to the flashy hype and selling techniques used by most marketers. That's what first attracted me to My Internet Business and the Mentoring Team they had. They offered to take my marketing and sales skills, adapt them to the internet, and then help me be in profit after about two months. That seemed reasonable.

They have kept their word, and more. I have never seen such a large library of digital products that I can market and sell. Literally thousands, and most of the marketing is free. Now instead of my success being tied to a person trying to decide if they want to live in Colorado or Wyoming, I have a diverse product line. If something isn't selling today, I move on to something else. If I don't know how to market something, the video or written instructions are all right there.

Now, instead of fretting over the rebound of the stock market, I am plugging away each day with new tools and ideas. It's refreshing and, funny enough, turning out to be profitable. I'm still new and not retired yet, and I don't drive a new BMW, but my family won't lose their house this month. Not everyone can say that in today's troubled times.

Who knows, this recession may be just the thing this 36 year old husband and father of two needed to get out of the box.

Click here to learn more about my online business.
Click here to watch a short video of me describing the business.

How to Avoid Online Get Rich Quick Schemes

Advice on selecting the best residual income opportunities online, while avoiding the scam artists and phonies.

Intro Video...



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In these difficult economic times many people are looking to alternative avenues for making money. One increasingly popular avenue is the internet. However, there are a lot of snakes in the grass online selling a lot of hype about how you can have a six figure income in one month. As the old saying goes…if it sounds too good to be true…it probably is. So here are a few tips to help you steer clear of internet marketing imposters.

1. Avoid The Hype.If they start off by showing you their new BMW that they bought from last months earnings, or open a Fed-Ex packet with gobs of cash falling out. That’s a total emotional play to get people to sign up with their site, and then be left in the cold when it comes to training and mentoring. Run away quickly!
2. Google them. Whatever online marketing opportunity you are researching. In today’s e-world any information you want to find about a company or person, good or bad, is probably a click away. I did this when I researched starting an online business and I quickly found out whom I did not want to go with.
3. Try to get a call back. When companies are trying to convince you that they are the one you should go with, that’s when follow up is usually at its peak. If you can’t get a phone call or email back from somebody, in a day or two at the most, it’s definitely not going to get better once they have your money.
4. Contact an associate. One thing I did when I joined my online marketing company was emailed a few of the active affiliates. Ask direct questions, and be nice if you want to get the truth. A little sugar goes a long way, and could save you a lot of wasted time and money. People don’t respond well to questions like, “Aren’t you just trying to sucker me in and then dump me?!” Rather, ask things like, “How long have you been associated with ________ company”? Or, Are you finding that it is successful for you and how long did that take?” A very important, and often missed question is, “How much money will it cost me before I see a profit?”

If you begin your research into building a successful online business with these thoughts leading the discussion, your chances of avoiding the scam artists will be greatly increased.

In future posts we will take a look at what to look for in a mentoring or coaching program when you find a good online income opportunity. They are out there; you just have to do your due diligence.