Sunday, October 21, 2007

Blogging for dollars

The actual mechanics of earning a good living from a blog are very simple and straightforward. In fact, there are only two things you have to think about and work at. It is HOW WELL you do those two things that determines whether or not your blog will make you any money or not.

Everything you do will fall under one of these two major categories:

1. Setting up and maintaining your blog
2. Driving traffic to your blog

There are many specific things you have to do, and there are many subtleties and variations as to how you decide to do them, but they will all fall under one of those two main categories.

Interestingly, the actual act of blogging—of writing posts—falls under the second category, not the first.

In order to understand new concepts, it is often helpful to compare these new ideas to things we are already familiar with. With that in mind, let’s compare the opening of your new blog with something you may be more familiar with: the establishment of a “regular” business—say a grocery store.

In such a comparison, setting up your blog will include pretty much all the things you would need to do to open a grocery store. Driving traffic to your blog would include all the things you would do to induce customers to come into your store.

Here we should pause and note the difference between the two words “shop” and “buy.” The word “shop” implies you have induced people to come into your store to look around. The word “buy” means they have purchased something from you and given you money. In the blogging business, this distinction is important because you can make money either way.

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