How To Make Money Blogging - Step 1
Have you ever wondered “how do I create a money making blog“, heck you might think “what is a blog”. Simply put a blog is an online journal that is updated often. People often ask me that question when I tell them I make my living by blogging. I blog about things I enjoy in life like sporting events, cooking, wine and things I would like to see or do such as vacation in national parks. Blogging is not difficult, and you can make money from your blog as well. I wanted to publish a guide to help people successfully launch their own blog from start to finish. This is the first of a series of “posts” based on creating a money making blog.
Step 1) Researching Possible Blog Topics For Profitability
First download this excel spread sheet I created to help you analyse profit potential.
1) The first step in creating any type of successful blog is to start by creating a list of topics you enjoy and are knowledgeable about. Give yourself several days and don’t rush the process, while starting a new blog or website is very exciting and you may want to jump right in this is incredibly important. You should be able to write about anything you put on your list, if you are not sure if you can write about the topic don’t put it down.
2) Once you have a list of 3 possible blog topics it is time to find out if the web will support your possible blog topic down the road financially. To do this you will need to do some basic keyword research, below you will find several resources to help you evaluate the earning potential of your possible website topics. Use the excel spread sheet to record your information, get started by access the various sites below:
a) Wordtracker, you will want to purchase a one day pass (less than $10 and very worth it – this data will drive your blog) at wordtracker in order to get a full list of search terms with supply, demand and competition. Once you gain access to wordtracker head to compressed search and enter your possible blog topic into the form. I will use the example of “fishing” and select “number of results 500”, we want to get every possible search term any has ever used when searching within your possible niche.
Analyzing The Results – Of The First Screen:
- The more results the better (means a lot of people are intrested in your topic)
- The higher the numbers in the “predict” section the better
- Search terms that are somewhat commercial are better – several commercial examples in “fishing” search: fishing lures, fishing tackle, fishing boats
- Also note: while many adsense marketers focus on “high paying keywords” niche’s with huge demand (very popular topics) can make incredible money with 10 and 20 cent clicks too, don’t get too caught up with “how much will those terms earn per click”
Using Search Term Data Create Catagories For Your Blog:
Using this first screen of search term data and go through and look for 10 terms that would make good blog catagories. Simply scroll down the page until you find a search term that makes sense for a catagory and added it to your excel spread sheet, copy over “replace - [category holder]”. Side note: I see a lot of bloggers that don’t use enough catagories, blog catagories are incredibly search engine friendly when done right, using search term data to define your catagories will get your heading in the right direction fast.
As your “catagory” search terms into the excel spread sheet also enter the “predict” value into the “keyword demand column” as well. Next head over to the Google Traffic Estimator tool and place all your search terms in the box.
- Under “Choose a currency” select US and enter 100 for “Max CPC”
- Enter 1000 under choose a daily budget
- Next enter language information as well as Country info and click “Continue”
The next screen will return “estimated” data including:
- Estimated Avg. CPC
- Estimated Ad Positions
- Estimated Clicks / Day
- Estimated Cost / Day
You are intrested in the red values, in your excel spread sheet enter the given values under each of your “catagory” search terms. Then move on to fill in the the last bit of data on your excel spread sheet “keyword supply” simply search google with each of your “catagory” search terms. I searched google for one of the “fishing terms” that would work well for a catagory and google returned:
- I searched fishing lures – and got … Results 1 - 10 of about 6,770,000 for fishing lures. (0.20 seconds)
Take number marked in red above and enter it in your spread sheet under “keyword supply”, save your results and move on the the next topic and repeat. Once all the data is filled in for your three top subjects you can analyze the spread sheet and decide which topic makes the most sense. Often times people will choose the topic that offers the highest “Google Estimated Cost Per Day”. However it is important to mention that this number is based on people “buying clicks” your job is to drive traffic and then to drive clicks (totaly different from buying clicks). Make sure you weigh out how passionate you are about the topic you pick, how much completion is which your given niche and just how many people are searching for your “catagory” search terms. Use the dollar figures provided by Google as basic way to get an earnings idea. Again, you will need to rank well and drive traffic to earn great money, so if one niche has big dollar numbers in the google colums but not too much “keyword demand” you might have a tough time making good money.
The golden formula of earning with adsense: website traffic x adsense clicks = money earned. If you can’t drive traffic for what ever reason none of those numbers will matter. Additional parts of this article will be posted to various blog catagories and then linked here, you can get automatic email updates to this site by clicking here.
Creating A Successful Website:
Part Two: Coming Soon
Part Three: Coming Soon
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