I could never in my wildest dreams expect this little blog to take on the position it has and with such a following. I’ve always just had fun blogging and at the outset, probably just like you, I did not have a clue that I could make money out of blogging. The simple fact is that lots and lots of people earn a living, many of them full time out of blogging, and to cap it all they do it with remarkable ease (after a little practice) It just takes 4 things:

Wisdom

For a kick-off you really have to know things that people will want to learn about and are avidly searching for. Lots of people. Its what Internet Marketers call a Hungry Market or (niche) and identifying it and being able to talk about it is the key to figuring out how to make money online. Answers to the simplest questions are your best solution. E.g. How to start blogging? How to get back you your windows or mac password? How to recover data from a crashed drive when it all seems to have disappeared? You see hundreds of thousands of people are asking Google and the other search engines these and similar questions everyday, so you want to give them your best, simple, comprehensive answer – make sense? You also have to be knowledgeable enough in all things Internet to set up a proper blog. And believe me that is very easy and you can go back through all my blogs as I cover this subject in quite some depth. Just starting a free blogger account to throw up your thoughts will not be enough; it takes a lot more then that to turn a site into a resource that will be both informative and profitable. But believe me it is by no means difficult and Blogger and Wordpress (which is the platform this blog is built upon) is easy to acquire and easy to set up and run.

Tenacity

Learning how to make money online out of blogging takes a little bit of time. If you want to blog for a living, you need to be ready to write new and relative content consistently (as in just about every day or 5 out of the 7). I try and blog every single day of the year and miss a few, but not many. But it doesn’t have to take long – for may say 30 minutes a day and then turn that blog into an article for my free coaching academy, so that I get two pieces of content for the price of one and that one, is just my time. There are of course exceptions out there (people like John Chow is reportedly earning $7,000 per month after only 6 months…good on him, go for it John), but in most cases, most of you won’t see anywhere near that and maybe just a few hundred dollars for you from months 4-6 and then upwards and onwards, with a bit of focus and consistent effort every day.

Getting Seen

If nobody is reading your blog, where will you get the visibility needed to attract and invite new readers and advertisers? Who will click on your ads? The answer I’m afraid is simple: no one. Being a good blogger involves a lot more than writing great content, it’s also about having great PR skills. You will need to input a lot of your time reading and participating in conversations on other blogs, submitting your own articles to social networking sites and Article Directories and gradually building a large and significant network of like-minded bloggers. Making friends in the blogosphere, just like in real life is the key to success. Its called RELATIONSHIPS – my favorite word.Friends will link to your articles, put you in their blogroll and talk about you wherever they roam. You of course absolutely must do the same for them, not only because doing this will be profitable to you, but also because you care about the success of everyone. This is a collaborative strategy within which lies the key to how to make money working online.

Essential basic English-writing skills

Now, nobody would say my English is perfect, far from it in fact, I tend to write in a conversational style and that’s absolutely fine as your blog has to be a reflection of the real you, your personality, but blogs are the realm of people. Some of them are brilliant at writing, others like me are not that great, but does this stop Google from indexing your pages? Of course not. Does it stop people from being interested in what you have to say, as long as you know what you’re writing about? No sir!. English is the language of the Internet. If you want to maximize the reach and exposure of your content as an stand alone blogger, you’ll have to write in English. Just be yourself, be attentive know your stuff and the rest as they say will just follow.

After having done all this, your blog will be ready to be monetized. One of the most important things to consider when adding revenue sources to your site is to make sure you diversify. You must not put all your eggs in one basket! You need a good mix of “cost per click”, “Cost Per Mille” and “Cost per action” ads.

Here’s a little summary definition of each term:

• Cost per click (CPC): Form of advertisement that pays you when someone clicks on it.
• Cost per Action (CPA): Form of advertisement that pays you when someone accomplishes an action (such as downloading a file or subscribing to a service)
• Cost per mille (CPM): Form of advertisement that pays you to display a banner, button or any other form of advertisement 1000 times.

Here is a quick list of advertising services you can easily use to monetize your own blog. Every single one of these strategies has paid off consistently and still works today, so if you sign up, you won’t have to worry about whether you’re making a good choice or getting scammed and by the way, I am not an affiliate of any of them.

• Performancing Ads: Amazing 125X125 Ad platform solution.
• Adsense: The Internet #1 money advertisement program. Allows you to display contextual ads on each pages of your site (CPC / CPA).
• Chitika eMiniMalls : Allows you to integrate links to products or a shopping mall within you blog (CPC).
• Feedburner FAN: A CPM based advertisement network.
• Private advertisement deals: Selling ad space privately isn’t difficult when you receive a lot of traffic and have a good technorati / alexa rank. A few people contact us from time to time asking about how much we charge for the top banner (Right now, Novell has the spot), but usually, the offers are too ridiculous to be considered.