Blogs: Make Money Online & Stoke Web Site Traffic
Everyone who has a weblog is familiar with the option of hosting some ads, usually Google Adsense, on a blog. The idea is to receive some advertising revenue everytime someone clicks on an ad. These types of ads, however, get mixed reviews. Some bloggers say they earn a fair amount of income with these ads, but others report little. As they are free to try and easy to set up, there is no risk, but the success of this approach will obviously depend on surfers finding your blog, and on getting enough traffic to your blog.
Blogs tend to be rich in content, which the search engines prefer, so they are a natural vehicle to increase traffic over time. That is, if you update regularly with useful content (especially if it is keyword rich), not only will visitors come back more often, but so will the search engine spiders. The search engine visits your blog page more frequently if you update consistently, especially on a daily basis. These visits will ultimately move your blog higher and higher on the SERPs (Search Engine Results Page), which will eventually translate into more traffic, more clicks, and more revenue.
It also helps if your blog serves a niche market, as it will have less competition, and your traffic will be “targetted traffic.†If you can stick to one topic or topical area, your blog will have a higher density of related keywords, which will make it easier for people searching for that topic to find you. Do not try to saturate your blog with keywords, but use them whenever you can do so effectively.
After you have established the blog and are in the habit of updating it regularly, consider joining some affiliate programs, which can work as well on blogs as on web sites. Affiliate with companies that sell products related to your site or blog. When people click on the link in your blog (or the ad to the side) and purchase a product, you make some income. Again this usually does not cost you anything to try, but note that most advertising works better with “targetted traffic.†If you are passionate about your topic, and also in your endorsement of a product, then affiliate programs can make money for you.