Does Blogging Make Money?

Are you wondering, does blogging make money? The short answer is yes. But the reality is that only a small percentage of blogs are successful. There are many gems in a large mountain of ordinary rocks, and some of those gems do quite well.

J.D. at Get Rich Slowly now blogs as a full-time occupation as of this month. He worked hard to get his blog up to speed, and a venture he started as a hobby became an excellent source of income over the course of a couple years.

I am a daily reader of Survival Blog by J.W. Rawles, author of Patriots: Surviving the Coming Collapse. This is another very successful, and apparently lucrative, niche blog. It will soon reach the impressive feat of 3 million visitors, with over 69,000 unique hits each week.

So does blogging make money? Only when certain factors coincide. To be a successful blogger, you'll need to:

• Know basic SEO (search engine optimization) and keyword techniques. I gained this experience writing $10 web content articles for a company that had a contract with a well-known website. There is a plethora of information available; some of the best can be found in the free Site Build It Netwriting Masters Course.
• Find a niche. What is your passion? What do you love to research and write about? What skills do you have? Choose a topic that leaves you room for years of great content, not a passing fad. Findout what people are searching for by using Wordtracker's free tools.
  
• Promote your site. Use social networking, link building and other techniques (check out Copy Blogger for more in-depth traffic-building information).
  
• Monetize your blog with affiliate products, Google adSense and paid sponsors.
  

My own little blogs, Raw Milk Mama and My Work at Home Mom Blog, both in their infant stages, have already earned a few pennies in Google ad sense revenue as well as a few dollars in Amazon commissions.

Following my own advice, I hope to grow them into profitable blogs. I'm not in it for the money, yet, but as an eventual outcome, I'd be pleased.