You may be surprised to learn that you can actually make a lot of extra cash, even up to a full time job, just by creating or writing blogs, about pretty much any subject you like. This post talks introduces writing blogs as a money making technique and some advice as to how to make sure you are making the most from your blogs. I will have further posts later about other things you should know about this method.

I'm assuming you already know what a blog is. If you don't check out wikipedia's definition here.

I know a lot of people that enjoy either blogging for themselves or writing comments on social networks sites like Facebook, mySpace etc. What you may not know is that you can actually turn this hobbie into a money making method. Even if you don't already blog, the concept of essentially being able to write about stuff you know about, stuff you like or even stuff you want to know about, and then getting paid for this, is really pretty attractive.

So the question is, how do you make money from blogging. Well, you can actually get a job for someone else who will pay you either a salary or some sort of fee to write blogs but the most common and most profitable way is to write your own blogs that you then "monetize". By this I mean that you get visitors of your blog to either click on Google Adsense or other pay per click advertising, or you get visitors to purchase something through an affiliate link - usually something related to your blog of course. So in essence, you make money from blogs through affiliate marketing.

There are many important things to know about blogging for extra money. Some key things to ensure success include:

1. Make sure that the content on your site is attractive, not from a pure graphics point of view but mainly from what is written in your posts. You need to give value to your visitors so that they will want to read through your posts, come back & visit your blog at other times, recommend your blog to others and so on. The old addage definitely applies here: "content is king!"

2. Like all parts of affiliate marketing, you need to spend time doing keyword research. You need to find a niche subject that is getting a lot of searches in the search engines and that doesn't have a great deal of competition. You should find a subject that also has good affiliate programs linked to it so you can point visitors to them to make some money. I'll do a separate post at a later time about how to do good keyword research..

3. You need to generate traffic for your blog. Its no good creating the best blog with the best content, without getting visitors to your blog. There is a whole science behind doing this successfully. I will create more posts about this topic soon.

4. Do not rely on Google Adsense for your monetization. Unless you plan to have hundreds of blogs, these days the money you can make through Google Adsense can be very limited. The best part about Google Adsense is the ease of creating these links on your blogs. There is even a plug-in for Wordpress (the most common blogging software used to create blogs) that allows you to do it automatically.

Pro's:

* Blogging can be one of the more enjoyable ways of making money through affiliate marketing, especially if you blog about things that you enjoy and you enjoy networking with other people about the same topic;

* With software like Wordpress, and Fantastico (most web hosting companies offer you this in their web hosting packages), it couldn't be easier to set up a blog

Blogs are so much easier to create than other websites and because of the nature of blogs, your posts can be just natural writing instead of formal sales copy you often need to put on websites;

* Blogs work for you even when you aren't there - while you are sleeping, while you are on holidays and so on;

Con's:

* Blogging for extra money is not a fast method of making money by any stretch of the imagination. You need time to create the blogs, optimise them for search engine, write or source good content and then promote them. You then need to research good affiliate marketing programs and create content that will motivate a visitor to click on your affiliate link. It typically takes about 6-12months before you start seeing good money being made from any blog and that's if you promote it correctly;

* Depending how successful you are at any one subject, you typically have to have a number of blogs running at one time in order to create good money. This can be time consuming and tedious if you have created blogs on subjects you don't really enjoy but you chose because they are good money makers;

* There is a lot to learn about blogging successfully here www.wdyntk.blogspot.com. There are many bloggers out there that don't know how to do this well and so do not make much money and soon get discouraged

by Colin Line