Making Money Online - Blogging

Using Blogspot to make money online...

In my last post I suggested that having your own website was a good way for a beginner to earn extra cash from home. Today I'm going to narrow this down and say that a blog is a good way to start making money online. Even better, I'm going to suggest that the Blogger platform is a great way to get started.

Why A Blog?
A blog is very easy to get started with. After the initial set up, all you need to do is write. The blog software takes care of all of the organization and presentation of your content for you.

Blogs do well with the search engines as well. I suspect it's because of the frequent updates. I find it easier to get backlinks for my blogs than for other sites. If you don't understand the significance of backlinks yet, that's okay. I'll write more about search engine optimization and backlinks in the future but for now just be aware that in general more backlinks are better.

And don't underestimate the power of a blog. It can turn into one of the real work at home opportunities. But instead of risking everything by giving up your day job, you can just start out in your spare time. And as you'll read soon, it's one of the better ways to earn extra money online without spending a cent. And if you keep at it, you can build up a passive residual income just like all of the internet marketing experts talk about.

Why Blogspot?
I know this point will be contentious with all of the Wordpress fans out there, but Blogger is a great way to get started. It's free. It handles large volumes of traffic. And the kind folks that run it allow you to make money from your blog in a multitude of ways.

I know a self-hosted wordpress blog doesn't cost much to get of the ground, but you may try a few different projects before you strike upon something that works. By using Blogger, you can play around as much as you want knowing that if it doesn't work out, all you've lost is some of your time.

Can you rank well with blogspot? Absolutely! Any number of competitive search terms have one or more blogger blogs near the top of the search engine results, including the ultra-competitive "make money online" keyword. There are a couple of blogspot blogs which float around the first page of results on Google for this term. I'll leave the task of finding out which ones they are as a homework task for you.

The hardest thing to decide when you're creating your blog is what to write about. The biggest mistake many people make is to write about making money online. It's a tough niche to start out in - there's heaps of competition all pushing the same products (normally to other bloggers who already have the same affiliate links on their own websites).

For your first attempt, try to write about something you know about or which you have an interest in. This will make it much easier to pump out the content. The only thing to keep in mind is that you'll most likely be selling a product or service on your website - or selling advertising space to someone else pushing their own product or service. So choose a topic that lends itself to this.

Limitations Of Blogspot
The advocates of self hosting do have a couple of valid arguments against Blogger though. And you need to be aware of these limitations.

You're at the mercy of the owners of Blogspot. All the work you put into your website would come to nothing if they were to pull the rug out from under you and shut down your site or remove the service altogether. While it's not too difficult to keep a backup of all of your content, backlinks are another matter. This is where much of the work is and if you were to change your website url, you'd have to undertake the arduous task of getting all of your links moved across. But don't panic. Having said all of that, I've never heard of anyone losing their blog as long as they've played by the rules.

Another drawback is that you don't own your own domain name so you can't sell it (well not officially anyway). For any one of a number of reasons, blog owners sometimes try to sell their websites. It maybe because they are in the business of buying and selling sites, or the site may have been developed specifically with the goal of making money from an eventual sale. It could just be that they've lost interest or don't have the time to maintain it.

I'll write more about setting up your blog, driving traffic to it and making money blogging in future posts. But before you start thinking about what affiliate programs to join or which pay per click programs to sign up to, for now just start thinking about a topic or topics you think you could write a bit about. This is not a get rich quick scheme, but rather a legitimate home based business so you need to take the time to develop it properly.