Over the past several years, blogging has become a new source for generating money online. Early on it was a major focus on creating web sites and e-commerce platforms.

However, with the advancement of WordPress — it’s just been way too easy to create a blog, and get a site up and running in a few minutes.

The majority of blogs out there are literally garbage floating around the Internet, while a select few soar above the rest by providing quality content and resources for their readers.

If you’ve created an authority blog and still haven’t figured out a way to make money or are too afraid of alienating your readers, this post is for you!

Let’s go over three different methods you can use to generate revenue without scaring off your blog readers and looking like a sell out in the process.

1. Sell Yourself Through Consulting

Depending on the type of blog you run, you can offer consulting services.

Setting this up is as easy as adding a new post category called “Consulting.” This option isn’t limited to just marketers and entreprenuers, however.

If you are a web designer, you would offer design services, which would fall under the same category.

Your consulting page should include a contact form, email and phone number, along with your past work experience and what services you are offering.

Don’t expect a massive flow of clients running your way, but even if you bring in one or two jobs a month, this could still generate a few hundred or thousands of dollars a month.

2. Recommendations & Referrals

When you have a big authority blog that lots of people are reading, your recommendation goes a long way.

There is nothing wrong with recommending a service, especially when you are using them yourself (that’s actually the most profitable affiliate marketing technique out there).

Through affiliate marketing and partner programs, there are many ways you can start earning commissions on all referred customers.

Services like Aweber, which many blogs use to power their mailing lists, pay 30% for every referred customer. The same holds true for web hosting and hundreds of other services.

Now that you know you can start earning money through referrals, listen up:

DO NOT start posting articles for the sole purpose of promoting these products.

This will be seen right away by your blog readers as a method for generating money.

Instead, simply link to these recommended partners in any posts on your blog where you may have already mentioned them.

3. Sell Your Blog for Massive Profits

The last and most profitable way to make money from your blog is to look down the road at a potential sale for your site.

If you have already created an authority blog that has lots of traffic, inbound links, readers and a source of revenue — you don’t need to be generating thousands upon thousands of dollars a month for a big site sale.

Through Flippa.com, hundreds of web sites and blogs are selling for multiples of more than 50 times their monthly earnings.

I’ve personally purchased a huge blogging site, BloggingTips.com for over 60 times it’s monthly revenue, simply because it’s an amazing authority web site that I know has a ton of value in it. Depending on your site’s authority and niche, you can get more or less.

Using these same methods mentioned above, I’ve created many successful blogs than rank very highly in the search engines and top 20k in Alexa.

Through the process of creating great content and establishing yourself, then focusing on a revenue generation model, your readers will continue to appreciate the value in your web site and keep coming back for more.

This guest post was written by Zac Johnson, an internet marketer with over 15 years of experience, and blogger at ZacJohnson.com and BloggingTips.com. Zac also just wrote a complete guide book on how to make money through web site flipping called, “Flip This Web Site: How to Buy, Improve and Sell Web Sites on Flippa“.

Related posts:

1. Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

2. 30 Real Ways to Make Money Blogging

3. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

Warning: I’m not telling you to do any unethical or unlawful activity. Hear me out for at least a few seconds. If you see an opportunity where someone has already started something but hasn’t taken the right direction, please act upon it and deliver.

“Stealing” is merely innovation. You didn’t invent it, but you are innovating and stealing in a good way.

The best inventions are ones that become inovations.

The number one example I can think of is how Apple is know as innovators. Many people in the tech and developing industry know that Apple is very strict and somewhat harsh to inventors bringing their inventions into them. They are strict and harsh in the ways that they are very willing to turn down many requests or inventions that they’ve received. Why? Many inventions are just too outlandish or Apple doesn’t see their invention being right for this specific time in society.

So many bloggers say how they wish they would have done what others are now doing. Be that blogger that takes a risk and “steal”.

The True Importance

We need to be in the mindset of observe to steal and not follow.

I want to talk to you why it’s important to “steal” that idea or invention from the artist, inventor, or initial person who came up with it. When looking or reading successful blogs or places on the interwebs you begin to admire their work and go down “their” path. Why do we go down “their” path and why am I using quotation marks around “their”?

We go down the path of these successful people because we see them making money, gaining popularity, and/or we want to see the benefits sooner rather than later. When referring these successful people and “their” paths, it’s merely us following them. We retract their footsteps because we want them to lead us down the right or exact path as them.

Is this right? No. I’ll tell you what is right… It’s important to see how these successful people get to where they are and take advice or tips from them so we don’t make “stupid or dumb” mistakes.

These footsteps are for merely us having to learn not follow. It’s time to observe to steal from an artist.

We can always change our plan of action into becoming successful. We just need to adjust now rather than later.

Plan of Attack

On the Same Page

Remember as I’ve said before, “stealing” is merely noticing the potential of something and acting upon it before they or others do. This will involve risk, planning, and execution.

Discover the Opportunity

What happens you see an opportunity? I’m not talking about the opportunity of taking the advice from the followed footsteps and add your originality to it as basic as your own voice.

The true opportunity is when you see something not being done and truly feel there will be great benefits to a group of people. Sometimes this opportunity is not one you invented but one you discovered and feel it’s not being done correctly.

Put it in Your Name and Roll

Don’t be afraid to take credit for either coming up with something awesome or discovering something awesome and implement it in ways that you deem would be better.

When I discovered something that someone intially had but thought about it in a different way on how it would be implemented and adopted it felt strange to take credit. But, I knew if I would take credit I could roll with the idea and not be bogged down by the thought of whether to continue or not. The inventors might be frustrated if they discover what you have executed, but don’t have their frustration effect you and your idea.

Inventors are rarely innovators because they are focused on creating something new. They aren’t focused on it being adaptive or fitting with society at that moment or in that form. Be the innovator.

Review and Execute

Brainstorm, imagine, discover, observe, and execute.

Those five words pretty much highlight and sum up the items needed to be completed to steal and conquer and not follow in someone’s footsteps.

The key one though is executing. I’ve personally struggled with this. I’ve brainstormed, imagined, discovered, and observed so many times and during my time I’ve helped out so many. I’ve helped people with my ideas or innovative ideas instead of executing them in the a creation of mine.

Be an Innovator and a Leader

Once you execute you can begin to lead this thought of what I failed at doing in the beginning. Go out and lead the thought of not following people in their footsteps. Successful people want us to know of their footsteps and to not go down the same ones that they totally found as mistakes. We have every reason to go down their mistaken steps to prove them otherwise, but what is important is to not strictly follow them.

If you and I could be more innovative with our thoughts and passions we can not only lead others but we can feel a much larger amount of gratitude.

Innovate and lead instead of following footsteps striving to just break into the market and make some success with a lower amount of gratitude. Not to bring up debate, but think about the ways of Apple instead of Microsoft when referring to music. Sorry, I had to.

You will ultimately stand out and get noticed and make those inventors and other innovators jealous.

Photo by Kenny Louie.

Related posts:

1. 21 Reworks to Achieve a Better Blog in 2011

2. Do You Have the Best Possible Chance to Conquer Design Versus Week?

3. Creating a Business Culture on Your Blog

It’s 2011 and the way people are sharing items, talking with others, and getting their content is changing at a rapid pace. This pace might increase, but more importantly we need to be ready and stay on the leading edge. Whether it be your blog design, content, marketing, or how you’re making money we can all achieve a better blog in 2011.

Just before the new year you’ve probably noticed many blogs changing their design, adding to their content base, trying different marketing methods, and making money in different ways. In the blogosphere we’ve been entertained by some major reworks to prepare for 2011 and I’ll focus on a few out of the many hundreds of thousands in the first two categories.

The 4 categories we will be focusing our reworks on will be design, content, marketing/sharing, and making money. The methods, concepts, and ways behind each of these categories are changing especially for 2011.

Design

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration. -Jeffrey Zeldman

Design is that upper most subjective element of your blog and yet it remains to be very vital to how your community perceives the view of the blog and it’s content. Without a quality and effective design we can’t stand out, attract more people, and show people the true dedication of our content and mission/vision. A design says a lot, especially when its reworked.

• Why would they change their blog design? Are they minor or major?
• Are they redefining their mission or going down a different path?
• Is it expansion or simplification?
• Reorganizing the content and user-experience in what ways and why?

Let’s now look at a few blogs that have changed their design and focus the attention to why they were reworked.

• Problogger.net:Adding a featured post or a highlighted post that Darren Rowse wants people to make sure they check out along with a new professional overall layout.
• CopyBlogger.com:Known for having that “CopyBlogger” free WordPress theme and really was just focused on content. Added a podcast, specialized pages of information, and a cleaner overall design.
• Mashable.com:Have been through many design changes to handle the different topics, stories, and feedback covered/received. Featuring more about what is trending.
• MarsDorian.com:A “simple” tagline went from “Spread Your Influence” to “The World Needs You”. These words represented the overall image and direction of the blog. A new design followed or shall I say it was a refresh.

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with design.

1. See what major changes you can make to enhance your content, your reader’s experience, or the mission/vision of the blog.
2. Do you stay on WordPress, go to Ruby on Rails, or even experiment with Squarespace or Tumblr?
3. Make additions or cut backs to better your power and/or your focus related to your mission/vision.
4. Do you stick with the blog-style layout or go more towards the feeling of a homepage. (CopyBlogger vs ProBlogger)
5. Are your users ultimately able to connect with your content how you want them to and how new technology would allow them to?
6. Navigation and what content should be displayed and the priority of that display. Consider the proximity of things such as your sharing options etc.

Content

Content is what your readers and people from the outside come to judge, observe, reflect on, share with others, and really embrace for quality and having an urge.
Your content may come in many shapes and sizes but must reflect consistency and have an good voice that makes people want to read, listen, or watch.

Think about these thoughts:

• What content is popular?
• Why expand your content on different formats? Good or bad? Thinking about personal strengths and not just going to other formats just because everyone else is doing it. i.e. Podcasts, Video, Live Shows, Mobile, eBooks, etc.
• How could your community or future community members better grasp your content?
• Re-check the quality, the relation to your voice and mission, copy-writing skills, and many other basics.

Let’s now look at a few blogs that have changed their design and focus the attention to why they were reworked.

• CopyBlogger.com:Separate out the content (related to design) by putting key content on individual landing pages for people to navigate from there. They also include a newsletter for “smart people” and a podcast show.
• SiteSketch101.com:Experimenting with the content… First is was like the blogging version of Mashable and now it’s back to more elaborate and “artistic” pieces of writing. The current (brief experiment) reassured the quality of the content.
• VirtualBusinessLifestyle.com:The frequency of posting has dropped mainly due to the content has really all been written down and published. Now you add videos and podcasting to keep the interaction going.

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with content.

1. What type of content are you finding your readers more interested in and in what format is that preferred? (Take a Survey/Poll)
2. Reread your mission statement and about page. Are you over-delivering or just doing too much?
3. Try out a different format or two for your content but if your community is set on one make that dedication.
4. How is your content organized? Do you organize by topic or by format or both? The focus of your content might change and so should the organization of it.
5. Using Facebook, Twitter, and Quora as tools for the pre-production of your content.

Marketing/Sharing

How are you getting out there? Are people talking about you? In order for this to happen we push to market ourselves with our blogs but also need to think about how willing people are to share your blog/content. What two big ways do we market our blogs? Guest posting and commenting.

While this are still ways to market let’s think about these:

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with marketing/sharing.

1. Think about other things than just within the online realm of content creation and your competitor’s blog. What about using Quora or Facebook?
2. Create a viral video for YouTube that models the mission/vision of your blog. Just don’t make it a lame, cheesy blogging video. It needs to entertain.
3. Go offline, into the wild, and form many different groups to create a name for yourself.
4. Setup events and/or workshops offline, then bring them online, and that transition will be like you are their guardian for the web.
5. Get the organic word-of-mouth going (online and offline) through the methods previously mentioned but be sure you remain transparent.

Making Money

Yes, there are those who just blog to blog. I’ve begun to realize though that anything you create and can be seen by anyone has the potential to put some money in your bank, PayPal account, or wallet. You might not have the intentions of making money, but the possibilities are always there.

With that said many others want to make money from their blog and one common route is affiliate marketing and advertisements.

The true best way to begin making money is building a name for yourself and you can do just that from some of the marketing reworks we just discussed or by just creating something awesome (super quality) and getting noticed by the right people. If you do that you’re covered, but you do have to hold up your reputation.

If you don’t have a name for yourself just yet think about these methods:

Now it’s up to you on what you want to rework with making money.

1. You have a blog but think of something outside the blogosphere. Call this your new project that is a service or a product that could (if you wanted it to) support your blog.
2. Create products for your blog and charge a subscription for them to receive something exclusive to a continued discount.
3. Start a members area only that is different from what I just mentioned. i.e. The ProBlogger Community
4. Setup a paid-subscription newsletter through letter.ly or Tiny Letter
5. Sponsor your content. Sponsorships show more connection and relationship with the content than advertisements.

21 Reworks Later

2010 was a year where many new things were created, tested, and continue to be tested. 2011 will surely be more testing of new creations and how people adapt to them but this will happen at a good rate.

Blogging continues to change with everything. We just have to be willing to rework before we are worked-out.

Oh, Blogussion is Reworking Too

You’ve heard that right. Blogussion has been through a few versions over the years all adapting to the community, a change in direction on pleasing the community, and how the creators behind it all vision Blogussion. All I can show you is the new logo that could even be tweaked in the next few months as it is being continuously worked on as I speak.

Alex and I would love to hear what you plan on doing to make your blog a better blog for 2011 in the comments.

Photo by Nikko Russano

Related posts:

1. How to Achieve the Same Benefits of a Guest Post by Leaving a Blog Comment

2. Mind Mapping for Blog Expansion & Making Smart Mistakes, Part 2

3. Go Big Like a Successful Entrepreneur by Rocking Out with An Initial Community

It’s the dream of nearly every blogger. The idea that making money can happen at any instant without logging into your blog or even being on your computer. Even to make money while we’re asleep. It’s what we all want, and after blogging for nearly two years, I can tell you right now that it is all very possible.

As I always say, your blog may not be the thing that makes you money online. It’s actually pretty difficult to directly earn money from your blog. However, indirectly, your blog can help quite a bit when it comes to finally making money online.

It still doesn’t hurt to try and make money from your blog anyway. It’s not impossible, and there is enough space in the blogosphere to have a money-making blog. You just may want to reconsider the idea of earning the most income from your blog above anything else, as its pretty unlikely compared to the other methods there are out there.

Why Work Hard When You Can Work Smart?

The ones who work hard and put the right amount of effort into accomplishing their goals will see the most success. Whether or not that is achieved by working smartly or at times over-working is chosen by you, but I think that when it comes to earning an income online, you have to mix both work ethics together.

Basically, you have to work hard now to earn big later. And when you earn big later, you really don’t have to work as hard. That’s the beauty of it!

The Value of Multiple Income Streams

Have you ever seen a blogger who posts their monthly earnings on their blog? It will usually be organized in some kind of table like this:

MY MONTHLY EARNINGS (MADE-UP)
1. Google AdSense: $100.65
2. Selling Banner Ads: $50.00
3. Text Link Ads: $35.00
4. Affiliate Sales: $172.00
5. Product Sales: $1,256.86
TOTAL: $1,614.51

The key thing to take away from a chart like that is that there are multiple income streams. It’s always smart to earn money online from different things. Like AdSense, or selling banner ads. They are two different streams.

The more ways you can make money from your blog, the safer you will be. Say for example, you product doesn’t sell as well as you were hoping for that month, and that you only earned about $100 from it. If you have other things going on, like selling ad banners or promoting affiliate products, you have chances to makeup that money you didn’t earn from your own product.

But just because you have a lot of ideas for making that money, it doesn’t mean you will be profitable. You need to work hard to make sure your different streams are actually bringing in money.

How to Balance Multiple Income Streams

They are something you need to build up over time, and aren’t just some quick way to make money. It actually involves quite a bit of strategizing and plenty of perseverance. Here are my best tips for balancing multiple income streams:

• Don’t spend all of your time on one stream. Diversify the time you spend and make sure you balance out the time you spend on building your streams into something very profitable.
• Don’t spend too little time either. Some things you do will require more time than others, and it’s okay if you need to put more time into one than the other.
• Pick wisely. Don’t just go around the web looking at every way possible to make money, pick the ones you think are reasonable and you can actually manage.
• Keep with them. Like anything else, consistency is key. Don’t drop something because it’s not working out now. Things to tend to work out a lot better later.
• Work smartly.

Working smartly is something that I keep bringing up, because it’s very crucial. It’s just as important as working hard, but at the same time it’s on a whole other level.

Why work hard on something that isn’t well thought out or truly beneficial to you? Work as hard on something as you’d like, but only do so if it’s the right thing to work on.

The Effortlessness of it All

By no means at all is making money an effortless thing. But, it doesn’t always require the greatest amount of effort once you get the ball rolling. A lot of it just becomes passive earning, where you don’t need to put hardly any work into making money.

The more steady income streams you have built up over time, the easier it becomes to make money whenever you want. When you’re sleeping, eating breakfast, or just surfing the web.

Photo by aspheric.lens

Related posts:

1. 5 Reasons Why You Should Bank On The Internet to Make Money

2. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

3. The Cycle of Making Money Blogging Pt. II

There are various reasons why someone would want to set up a blog. It could be to fulfill a need, an interest or an obsession in either his or her personal endeavors or business opportunities. For most people who have an online business, having a blog is an absolute must that serves its purpose and as an extension of his or her business.

For most of us trying to make an online income, monetizing our blog is a foregone conclusion. It’s just a matter of determining when the proper time is to do so.

While there are obvious benefits to the blogger who monetizes his or her blog at a later stage, rushing into it has its fair share of pitfalls too. So, care must be taken, and you should try to decide when that perfect time is to start.

Let’s take a look at both approaches, so you can see which approach will be best for you and your blog.

The “Monetize Later” Approach

I have to say that in general, I don’t see too many blogs without any obvious signs of monetization like banner ads or affiliate programs. 

Those who chose this approach tend to cater to a specific audience and are trying to build their blog to one that can command authority and trust.

Traffic is a top ingredient of its success and their first priority is to generate a huge amount of traffic to their blog, first, before anything else takes place. It’s like holding on to a trump card and waiting to find the perfect time to use it.

My Thoughts on This Approach

Banner ads used to be a popular and effective means of promotions years ago, but I personally feel they have lost much of their novelty.

In fact, some of these bloggers go from swearing by them years ago to swearing at them now. Perhaps those who preferred to monetize their blog later saw this coming and figured a better way would be to focus more on using their blog to build trust and market their brand name for their online business.

It depends a lot on the niche that you are targeting, too. The smaller the niche, the more targeted the audience becomes, and you have a higher chance of providing your product and services to this demographic of people who demand them.

On a small niche site I used to own, I had good success using banner ads. They were very targeted to the audience that I was catering to, which made them more appealing.

On a broader niche site, such as my replaceyoursalary.com site, it’s more of a hit or miss thing going on. Placement pays an important part.

My Final Verdict
Overall, with this approach, I think there are bloggers who want to gain recognition as a blogger who focus more on first building trust and getting traffic to his or her blog, then later looking for ways to monetize that traffic with targeted ads. You don’t have to agree, but there are many bloggers out there in various niches that use this approach. Did you use this approach? Why or why not?

The “Monetize at the Beginning” Approach

Monetizing your blog immediately when you first set it up has its advantages. Many people have used their blog specifically to make an online income; although, if you follow the exploits of John Chow and Darren Rowse of the blogging fraternity, it can be done but not as easy as it seems.

Most people choose to monetize earlier than later because they cannot find good reasons to wait. Earning a little money from a new blog now could go towards paying off some of the costs to operate your blog. Money is always the best motivation factor that can certainly make you work harder to achieve your goals in setting up the blog in the first place.

For some others, monetizing a new blog means not having to bother with redesigning it later to accommodate the banner ads and other forms of moneymaking strategies that may affect your overall look and feel. 

Those who choose this route may be seasoned bloggers who know just how to go about generating quick traffic to their new blog, too.

My Thoughts on This Approach

In order to be successful in monetizing a relatively new blog, you need to have at least two important things working well for you – targeted traffic and good conversions. You don’t want thousands of visitors coming to your blog and yet shy away from whatever products or services that your blog promotes, do you?

This is where your keyword research comes in handy and could make a difference between failure and success. It also depends on what content you are building on your blog.

If efforts have been made to focus on a specific topic, there is greater chance of very targeted traffic getting the information they are searching for on your blog. This of course translates to more sales and generates more income for your business.

My Final Verdict
Monetizing your blog at the beginning is a risky move, but can pay off later on as you are introducing your blog to the world already monetized. This way, readers will not be surprised or upset that you have added some forms of advertising to your blog later on down the road. Did you use this approach? Why or why not?

What Time is the Right Time?

As you can see, there is never a clear answer to when you should start monetizing your blog as there are many factors that determine the best time to do so. A lot depends on your goals in your business and the reason you set up your blog and what strategies you are currently using to meet those objectives.

Which approach do I prefer? As with my small niche site I talked about earlier, I set that up to monetize right away, and it worked. My broader niche site was set up the same way, and any future sites will follow suit. However, I have nothing wrong with the monetizing later approach.

Like I said, it all depends on what your ultimate goals are for you and your blog. For me, my goal is simple: to make money online.

What is your goal?

Photo by daybeezho

Related posts:

1. How A Blog Can Kick Start Your Freelance Business

2. How To Start A Blog: Blog Platform

3. Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Start Blogging V2.0

Are you drowning in a sea of bloggers who are blogging about the very same topic you are? Is your voice getting lost in the crowd? Are you tired of being non-existent among search engine results pages? If so, it's time to get with the program and start "Cornering the Market!"

Like many others out there, I thought I should blog about my passion. Which I certainly would encourage everyone to do. However, what do you do if your passion is a popular one? Are you up for the challenge of competing in a saturated market? In this post, I will explain why you may want to consider blogging about a topic somewhat "off the beaten path" in an effort to run a successful blog and perhaps even start making money.

See The Beaten Path and Avoid It

People tend to think alike

In my experience, I have found that most people tend to think alike. As a website developer, I’m often being presented with proposals for starting blogs, usually fashion, celebrity gossip, or finance. I think starting a blog is a great idea for many reasons, but my advice to these people is, "you had better be one heck of a salesman, writer, and personality." Otherwise, be ready to hustle.

Me, I’m into the development of internet culture, application websites in particular, and how people are using them. A little over a year ago, I decided I was going to start my own blog about web culture. Nearly every day I myself read several popular blogs on the subject. Clearly there is a demand! How could I go wrong?

Then it occurred to me, the internet is flooded with bloggers and teams of bloggers like TechCrunch practically shoveling first-rate content at us on a daily basis! How was I supposed to compete with that level of content flow? So much for being the Web culture guru!

Recognize The Opportunity & Do Your Research

Eight months later, a friend approached me about developing a craft beer blog. He was an avid fan of craft beer, very knowledgeable, and seemed enthusiastic about starting the venture, so I told him I would consider it. Craft beer wasn't exactly my passion, nor did I have what I felt was the required knowledge to be an authority on the subject. Nonetheless, I did some research on the beer industry and took a look around the Blogosphere to see what sites were covering craft beer.

I was pleased to discover that few beer bloggers appeared to possess the skills or resources I have as a website developer and video editor. Furthermore, it didn't seem as though they fully understood many of the aspects of blogging that we discuss here at Blogussion, things like proper internet marketing strategies.

After doing my research, I felt the niche was ripe for the taking.

As I worked on the design of our blog, I continued to study other successful bloggers and learn the tricks of the trade. I decided our site would approach craft beer from a different angle. It would be more about entertainment than information, since many blogs were already covering that area of the industry. This turned out to be a good decision.

Enjoy The Success & Build On It

In what felt like no time (half a year to be exact), our traffic is doubling from month to month, our brand is becoming widely recognized within the beer community, and we are now in the process of developing advertising relationships. Not to mention, nearly half of our traffic is Google organic!

Of course building the blog and community has been and continues to be a lot of hard work. There is still lots to do if we are to be as big as I hope we can be, but in a relatively short amount of time we were able to start building what I see as a promising community of dedicated viewers, and I believe that’s because I (along with my partner) recognized a need and sought to fill it.

Look beyond the obvious

There are so many needs out there not being met. Unfortunately, most bloggers are supplying ones that already are. My advice is to look beyond the obvious. Why attempt to grow your blog on land that is already being tilled? I’m finding running a promising blog with an active and growing community to be exciting and a lot of fun. Who wants to run a blog where no one comments? Perhaps providing a useful resource for like-minded individuals was my passion!

If you see an opportunity, but don’t possess the knowledge on a subject, find someone who does and team up. Let your job be managing the blog and promoting it. That’s plenty. Take it from me.

What do you think?

Is "Cornering the Market" a valid approach to running a blog or should we stick to our passions no matter how popular or competitive they may be?

Related posts:

1. What are the best methods for marketing blog articles? – Wired Weekend

2. How to Market Articles Without Leaving Your Blog

3. Stop Blogging About Blogging Already

Happy Sunday and Happy 4th of July! I hope everyone is having a good time celebrating out there. I can tell you that I’ve been celebrating my freedom by spending time writing up the third issue of the rockin’ From Planning to Earning newsletter. I just sent out the first issue with a nice design to go along with it, and let me tell you it’s awesome!

If you are unsure of what From Planning to Earning is, you can read about it on the signup page, or on the launch post.

But in a nutshell, this is a free course that will cover everything from starting your first blog to making money from it. So, regardless of your blogging status you will undoubtedly find something useful.

The course is split into 2 main parts:

• Web Guides

  In the web guides, you will learn about a variety of blogging topics and learn where to get the best blogging tools from. Many topics in each category are covered, and only the best tips are shared.

• Email Newsletter + 10 Day Ecourse

  Once you sign up, you will receive one email every day for 10 days that covers a great deal of information about making money blogging. You can learn the exact topics on the signup page, and once those 10 days are up: you will only receive emails once a week as a apart of our amazing newsletter.

See the First “Official” Newsletter!

Today I sent out the first newsletter that had the custom design I was talking about. I had released 2 others prior to it, but they were the boring old plain text messages. This newsletter has a sexy design to it.

So, if you haven’t signed up yet I just want to show you what you are missing out on by showing you this newsletter right here on the blog.

Click image to view the newsletter

I hope you decide to take a look at it and really consider signing up to From Planning to Earning. The newsletter isn’t even the best part about the whole guide, that’s the crazy thing folks.

See you guys tomorrow, we have a great lineup of posts this week!

Related posts:

1. How to Setup a Blog, Make Money & Everything in Between: From Planning to Earning is Live!

2. From Planning to Earning – A New Guide Proving it’s Never Too Late to Earn Money Blogging

3. What do you want to see at Blogussion? (And Sneak Peak of New Design)

The amount of bloggers that enter into the “blog about blogging” niche are growing everyday. All of us most likely have started blogging from reading other blogs that talk about blogging tips or heard it from someone related to this field. And most likely, we all have talked about some of the same subjects related to the topic of blogging. So, here I want to talk about why I want to have you think about and answer the call for stop blogging about blogging.

I am truly annoyed of anytime I come across a new site that talks about blogging tips. Why? Anyone can blog about blogging. We all have read blogs that talk about these tips and so we can just transform our take on things, insert our own voice, and attract the same community.

I am going to make five points to why you need to think about the idea of not blogging about blogging.

1. Misleading Rewards

While having a conversation with another blogger that has just recently formed themselves in the blogosphere, I asked why they started to blog about blogging. Their two main reasons were to help out people and that their community is strong. Let’s look more in-depth at these two reasons.

Helping Out People

Having a blog or really anything that has a mission or vision behind it is out to help people. Most of us in this world strive to help people out. I feel loved to know that so many people are willing to do this, but I know you can help out bloggers other than just offering tips directly related to blogging. It is misleading to say that you are helping out people when you see comments. Going further…

A Strong Community

Ever noticed seeing some of the very same people who visit your blogging tips & advice blog are from many of the other same blogs out there?

When I first started a blog about blogging tips I cannot tell you how grateful I was to see so much initial support. Whether it be comments, retweets, guest posts, or networking off the blog I felt I had a strong community.

I realized though that in the end this community was just bloggers striving for traffic to their blog and I really was not helping out people. Additionally, you will find this sort of community to not make you money.

2. We Can Always Learn From Current Blogs

Earlier I hit on the fact that there are so many blogs that offer blogging tips and advice like: Blogussion, ProBlogger, SiteSketch101, WeBlogBetter, Robb Sutton, and Fuel Your Blogging. There are already 6 right there. But, there are so many more and I know that these blogs you see here have attracted already strong communities so you can expect them to be around for a while.

You can always learn from these current blogs about blogging and stop producing the same sort of content. We have enough resources if we ever need help while being a blogger. Trust me.

3. You Can Blog About Anything

The power of social media and networking is still very much under-rated and not used to its full potential by many people.

Being a blogger means to publish content and strive for attention and participation

We can all do anything we want to do and accomplish it now with even more help with the web.

Blogging does not always mean blogging about blogging. If you can wrap your brain around that and strive to blog about something you love, something you want to learn more about, or something that you feel is an area that needs to be understood better I assure that you will be helping out many. These are all reasons to blog and why the world needs you.

4. Establishing Your True Self

We all need to make our true selves be known to the world! When this is achieved and worked at, people will know you by what you do. Everyone will.

Do you want to be known as a blogger that blogs about blogging? We both know that there is something else that defines you. Heck, the person I look up to for inspiration is Gary Vaynerchuk. He started a video blog just talking about wine. That’s it.

He put in the time and energy to build his very own and original community. But, everyone knows him as the wine guy. First you have to find out your passion and many of the blogs I mentioned above provide tips.

You need to wait for the passion to find you though, so some reflection won’t hurt.

The point is that building a personal brand for yourself is more important than ever and you hurt yourself by going the “easy” route of starting a site or blog by providing tips on what you JUST did.

5. Originality and Desire is Going to Win

I know I probably have you going down many different mind trails right now. That’s good!

Anything other than providing blogging advice is a good start. Do realize though that if you feel you are still honed on providing blogging tips and advice you need to bring out your originality and desire. Do this and you will win and be successful, but realize too that you need to do this with anything in life. Example being is that Blogussion is known by higher up bloggers for being that next generation blog.

What’s your distention? What are you going to blog about? Bring out that energy and desire!

Related posts:

1. The 2 (and a half) Golden Rules of Blogging

2. Build Your Community, Stop Begging for One

3. 5 Things You Can Stop Worrying About Right Now

The way you make money from your blog can be broken down into a cycle. Because it is unsafe to keep one income stream, you should always be willing to branch out and create more income streams. That is what this cycle is all about, proper repetition and diverse income streams.

Read Part One!

If you read part one of this mini-series, you will find that I, and 6-figure blogger David Risley agree that the way to make money blogging is by selling products to your audience. Not affiliate products, but your own products.

I do recommend you go back and read the first part, as I’m jumping right into the main point here. It’s really an interesting read.

The Cycle of Making Money Blogging

I’m going to finish explaining this cycle by talking about the last 3 parts of it: developing, selling and reviewing what you have done. This stage of the cycle is the more exciting part where you actually create your product. I recommend you don’t go too far into this stage without having fully completed the first half.

4. Developing Your Product

You have been developing your product since the first step, but you didn’t always know you were. That is, you were getting your blog ready for a product you may have one day. Now that your blog is ready for a product and you have an idea in mind, it’s time to begin working on it.

A product can range from a variety of things, and match accordingly to your niche. So, it’s hard for me to really go into too much detail of the things you should do. However, every product has the same, basic needs for success (meaning: plans you should be developing while creating your product):

• A marketing plan

  Sometimes, the best marketing plans come out when you actually have a product created. It’s easier to come up with a sales pitch, and decide what sort of audience could use it the best. But when you come up with your marketing plan isn’t important. As long as you have a decent plan to spread the word about your product, you should get some sales (if your product is useful enough).

• A sales page

  Your sales page cannot be your Twitter account! Making a sales page is easy! All a sales page is, is a page with any information about your product. It can be as simple as Marko Saric’s sales page for his Twitter marketing eBook, or as information jam-packed as our Blogussion Theme sales page is. As long as your potential customers have a place to go and get information about your product, you should see a few sales.

• A support center

  A support center for any product you have is an absolute must! Problems arise for people who buy your product, and the extent of their problems depend on what you are selling. They need somewhere to go if they do experience issues, so always have a great support center on your site for their issues (no, the comments section in your blog is NOT suitable for this).

• Pre-launch hype

  Do whatever you can to create some interest in your product beforehand. Hint at some of the cool things that will be included in your product, and do whatever you can to get as many people as you can excited. Even if it’s just two or three people, that number can change very quickly with just one satisfied customer. Remember: pre-launch hype can be just as important as post-launch.

What would you add to this list? Besides the actual product, what are some other things that are important to develop at this point in the cycle?

5. Sell it

This is undoubtedly the most exciting and nerve-wracking part of the cycle. At this point, you are ready to sell your product. Everything is ready to go, and all it takes are a few clicks to launch.

But it’s not as easy as just making a few clicks. If you want to see sales coming in, you have to use every resource you can and carry out your marketing schemes efficiently and effectively. This is where your blogging buddies come into play and your networking skills need to shine.

Once your product is up for sale, it should be up for as long as your blog is around. So, keep that sales page visible and bring up to your readers that you have a product for sale. The beauty of having a blog product is that it will sell many times over a period of time.

4 months later after launching my first product, I am still having days where it sells multiple copies and earning hundreds of dollars a day. Then there are days where I don’t sell a single copy. That’s just how it works, but the fact of the matter is that you are making money even months after your initial release!

That is what passive income is all about. If you can get a few products selling on your blog, then you have the opportunity to bring in some serious money.

6. Review the Journey

The last stage of the cycle, the reviewing part. If you make it this far, then I want to wish you congratulations in advance. Creating a product is not easy, and getting to the end of the cycle is a true accomplishment. Even if you didn’t earn as much as you’d like.

Whether or not you make serious income from your product doesn’t have to matter (that is, if you’re truly optimistic). There are more a product brings to your blog than just money:

1. The traffic a product can bring in is immense. If you have enough hype built around your product, you can keep an everlasting chain of traffic coming to your blog. That’s why the Blogussion Theme sales page is the top visited page on Blogussion everyday, I have created enough hype to keep traffic and sales flowing to it.
2. The potential for expanding your blog into something more will become a possibility when you launch your product. Blogussion now has a discussion forum which is being prepped for a public launch this summer (currently being used for support), and the release of just this one product has given me hopes for more later. Imagine what it will do for your blog.
3. The readership of this blog has increased without a doubt. More and more customers stick around the support forum and even the community on the blog, waiting to hear something about the future of my product. Can’t the same happen for you?
4. The confidence I have in myself has increased dramatically. I believe more and more that I can create larger sums of money from Blogussion from just this one product, and every sale I make makes me prouder and prouder.

So even if my product flopped, it still would have improved the community in some ways, and even restart the cycle by preparing it for another product launch.

Restarting the Cycle

Once all 6 steps have been completed, you will be back to where you started for your next product launch. You should find that as you develop more and more products, it will become easier and take less time. It can even be more rewarding if you make your product better than the last.

Do you think this cycle is accurate? When I looked back on how I developed my blogging product, I can say that I went through all 6 steps and am working my way through it again. If you have a product of your own, look back and compare your process to mine. How are they alike? How are they different?

Related posts:

1. The Cycle of Making Money Blogging Part I

2. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

3. The Key Factors to any Successful Product Launch

Recently, I read an article over at ProBlogger that talked about making money blogging. David Risley, a successful 6-figure blogger talked about how bloggers need to find a product. As a blogger who has a product, I can vouch for the points David brought up in his article and can say that making money blogging is done through having a product, not through blogging articles.

Read Part II!

I highly recommend you read David’s article at ProBlogger, as a lot of the points I’m going to be making in this mini-series will be based on some of the points he made in that article.

In January, I launched a product of my own. This was the first product I have ever sold, and my first real attempt at making money from a blog. When I put the product up for sale, it occurred to me that this was the way I was going to make money through my blog.

If you read David’s article, he said that if you want to make money blogging – have a product. If you read this article, (and a past article on the subject), I will say the same thing. His exact words were:

Most bloggers today operate in a dream world of made-up business rules. They try to make money with their blogs when they have nothing to sell. They’ll try to monetize the eyeballs only by littering the blog up with banner ads to sell other people’s stuff. It doesn’t take long for most bloggers to realize what a freaking difficult way to monetize a blog that is!

So if developing a product “isn’t your thing” and making money through your blog isn’t your intention, then stop reading. Nothing I have to say will hold much value to you.

Oh yeah, and if you are impatient and don’t understand that success is achieved over time, click the “x” button at the top of your browser. Because what I have to say needs time to develop.

Now, I’m not a 6-figure blogger like David Risley is, or really earn enough online to support myself (I’m only 16, so whatever I make goes a long way). But, I have earned enough money from selling just one product in the past 4^1/2 months to tell you that there is hope for your very own product as well.

The Cycle of Making Money Blogging

I have created what I believe the process of making money through selling a product is. The good news is that because it’s a cycle, it repeats itself. So, once you go through the cycle once, you have the capability to go through it again and again and earn more and more each time you sell a new product.

This cycle will be explained over the course of two articles. The first 3 of the 6 steps will be explained in this article, and the other 3 will be explained in tomorrow’s post.

I’m going to go over with you the first three steps of the process, prepare, research, and choosing your product. These are the three planning parts of the cycle, where you generally do more of the thinking and analyzing than actually doing anything else.

1. Preparation

You can’t approach something like this without a plan. It took me one year exactly to get my product ready for sale. I know that sounds like a lot of time, but there’s more to planning something like a product than the actual product itself.

What’s the one thing you need to sell something? People. You need readership; an audience who trusts and respects you. Think of the last time you bought something. You either bought it because:

1. Someone you trust told you about it, and because you trust them so much and see value in the product, you bought it.
2. You have read that persons blog or website for a while now, and you trust them enough to be willing to give them your money in exchange for whatever they have to sell.

So, in short: you need to have built some authority and have created a reputation for yourself.

Blog posts are not your product. They won’t get you paid.

As David said (and I agree with heavily), the articles you publish on your blog aren’t the things that get you paid. So many bloggers find different ways to monetize their blog articles, and if they are lucky – they will earn a few bucks doing it. The articles you publish onto your blog are NOT what makes you money.

They build your reputation, your readership, and really reflect the kind of blogger you are. The community you have on your blog is a result of the articles you publish, and how much you are going to earn from your product reflects the kind of community you have built.

So it took me about a year of consistent blogging to be able to build an audience that would look at my product, and buy it. For some, it takes longer. Some, not as long. But the most important thing, even more important than planning the actual product, is to have an audience to sell to.

2. Market Research

This isn’t the most enjoyable task, but it’s important nonetheless.

You are in complete control of what product you want to develop and sell. You have as much freedom to choose what you want to sell as you did when it came time to choose what you wanted to blog about. But unlike choosing your niche, you have to look at more than just your passion.

Once you have a pretty decent community built up (I had about 1,300 subscribers when I launched my product), you will be able to figure out what kind of people they are.

I can’t stress enough the importance of blog content for this step. Not only does the content you write bring your potential customers to your blog, but it reveals the kind of buyers they are. When I established my product, I knew these three things about my customer base:

• I know that many readers in this community are new bloggers without much to spend. I had to take that into account with the product I developed, and I have to remember that for the future. I found this out by actually talking to them in the blog comments, and seeing what their reactions were when I mentioned a paid blogging tool.
• I also know that a lot of users in this community use the Thesis Framework, which is what my product was built on. My reputation in the Thesis community helped sell the theme, and that reputation was established through all the work I have done on this blog.
• The theme that Blogussion uses has always been well-received by nearly anyone who has ever talked about it. I have been asked multiple times in the past to sell it, and have had offers thrown at me already.

It’s often the tiniest bit of information you can find out about your community that will help you decide what to sell, how much to sell it for, and when to sell it.

3. Find your product

Once you have your community and know what kind of buyers you have in it, it’s time to figure out what you want to sell.

The product you choose has to be something you are totally committed to. Finding a product to sell and choosing your blog topic are so closely related because they tie into your ability and willingness to actually do it.

So, with your market research in hand and the same process(es) you used to pick your original blogging topic, you can come up with the best product for your community.

Tomorrow: Part II
Tomorrow I will explain the other half of the cycle. How do you think it will tie into the first half? What are your thoughts about the first half of the cycle? See you tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. How Making Money Blogging Has Been Looked at the Wrong Way by Thousands of Bloggers

2. Little Known Ways Darren Rowse Makes Money Blogging

3. RetireAt21: Young Entrepreneurs Making Money Online – Review