Tips For New Bloggers

I have found a lot of serious bloggers started out with a free blog and then moved to a paid domain, though I read you should go with a paid domain instead. You need Google Adsense and Google Adwords. Also, being an affiliate and selling stuff or promoting company products can help you make money. You need to market yourself. Guess blog on blogs, follow other bloggers, yahoo answers, forums, there are plenty of ways. Use SEO, not obnoxiously, but it will help you be seen on Google easier. The most important thing is be patient and diligent, it will take a while.

 

Yes, I blog. I'm not trying to make a 'full-time income' from it (though maybe I deserve it, it's not a good economic example).

Most people who 'make money' from their blogs are either established professional writers 'in their own right' or are probably cheating.

Most 'money made from blogging' is from advertising-programs like AdSense or Chitaka or from advertising 'redirecters' like AdFly---such that the quality of your writing is a 'secondary matter' (in the eyes of the Advertisers ... they measure your 'goodness' by how many people read your blog.

There's also CPAway, Amazon Associates, Clickbank and a few other sales-networks that provide products for you to feature in your blogs and collect a small commission from each iteml

My blogs are on blogspot.com.

I won't tell you which ad-networks to use, but a couple tips on getting more viewers. First, write something people want to listen to--you might use Yahoo! Buzz or some other search-trend-watcher and make your posts about 'how the subject in the trend affects you.' Try to make your articles a valuable treasure that the reader will want to SHARE with friends.

 

The free/paid dilemma really boils down to what you intend to do and offer on your blog, the free sites such as Blogger and WordPress.com are VERY restrictive on what themes and plugins you are allowed to use and the last time I used WordPress.com they only allowed their premium members to make money from their blogs.

 

I've been blogging for a little over a year now and I personally don't think it makes that much of a difference whether you choose to use either a free or paid domain, although seeing as paying for a domain is fairly inexpensive then I'd suggest just considering that a bit more if you are planning on sticking with this hobby. As far as monetizing goes, I don't think viewers mind either way when it comes to this as well, so I'd suggest that you might as well out up Adsense as early as possible so you could learn the ropes and build your account sooner rather than later.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by "take it seriously." ... Yeah, those 'quip-tation marks' are kinda tricky; they COULD mean a) a word that might be made-up ('quiptations'?), b) a statement that I myself frequently make ('Don't work too hard!'), c) a quotation of a quotation (He said, "She said, 'He said!'"), d) sarcastic use of something they say (you really 'have to cite your grammar-textbook in every article you ever write') or e) sometimes I use it when I mean 2-or-more words as one big word (i.e. 'full-time income').

(Maybe some of that is what I learned while I was majoring in English Comp. Maybe some of it is just my best guess at it.)

I think the point I was making was 'Don't try to make money! (Rather, write about how you're living or something)'

I realize you're writing ABOUT "trying to make money," which might make my advice a little difficult; but people don't go to BLOGS to learn how to make money (unless you're already rich), they go to read of your own personal opinions on stuff.

 

I think starting off in a free hosting place is perfectly fine if it's your first experience and you're just getting your feet wet.
After that once you get better at it and have a good amount of followers and readers you can easily migrate to a paid solution which gives you more freedom and allow you to monetize your posts better.

 

Well, I have a slightly-different perspective on 'money-making': I see BOTH the credit that comes in AND the goods/services you can buy for it; if you don't provide the second (in this case, 'quality-audiences for your advertisers') to the market, the credit that comes in won't purchase enough of the goods/services you buy. I don't want you to fall into the trap of writing a lot & not getting paid enough because no one's reading.

(Not that I think you will, just that you might if you're not careful.)

And DrRipley would know better about WordPress. On Blogger, AdSense is super-easy to add because Google OWNS Blogger. I think you have to have access to the HTML-template in order to add AdSense almost-anywhere-else.