So You Think You Can Dance? - Um, Er, Make a Living Online

After months and months of trying to verify for myself, I have become pleasantly surprised to find out that people are out there making a living as bloggers.

Most bloggers create their own personal or business blog to post personal opinions and views or promotional information.

Professional bloggers, however, do make money using their own personal blog.
If you are interested in learning how to make a living as a blogger, consider this information before you get started.
If you decide that you would like to use your own personal blog in order to create an income there are a few things you should know. One method bloggers use to make an income blogging is by using partnerships with advertisers. You can easily form a partnership with an advertiser, using programs such as AdSense from Google or Yahoo advertising or MSN. When you create an account with using something one of these tools, you will be giving the advertiser permission to advertise on your blog. You will choose the placement and size of the advertisement boxes; however they will choose what advertisements will go up in the space. The ads randomly change depending on the content of your text.

Whenever a reader clicks on the advertisement, you will get paid. This can be very effective if you have high volumes of traffic on your blog. These programs will also give you traffic statistics in case you had no idea. There are many FREE blogging platforms out there but be careful because some of them will not support AdSense or programs that use Javascript. For example the hosted version of WordPress (wordpress.com) does not support this, however the version you have to host yourself (wordpress.org) does.

Blogger.com is another FREE platform that does support AdSense but has it own limitations. Be sure to look around for different tools and/or advice before deciding. I use the version of WordPress from wordpress.org that needs to be hosted by a hosting service for its power and flexibility. If you are starting a blog for business purposes this is the one I recommend.

Since making a living as a blogger all boils down to trying to get more traffic to your site so they might click on the ads, content is very important. The best thing to do is find a niche and stick with it. Posting a large amount of short articles on your blog that are keyword rich is a great way to get people to your blog. The more keyword rich your content is (saturated with specific keywords), the more traffic you will have. The idea is that when someone goes to a search engine and types in a keyword or phrase that you have written about, your site will come up since you have an article rich with that keyword.

Niche marketing is the easiest way to develop content and a following for that niche. You will need to do research to see what the most popular keywords are and use them to help you along. You can also use something called long tail keywords as well.

Think about searching on the Internet. Typically we all use a phrase to search instead of one word. Use these phrases (long tail keywords) in your content to help the spiders find your site. Using the time of year is a great thing to. Christmas keywords are extremely popular right after Thanksgiving occurs, so keep important holidays in mind when thinking of keyword phrases to use in your articles. If you are not a great writer, you can even hire freelance writers to help you with the content. The more content you have, the better off you will likely be.

Although this may seem simple, it is easier when you can have someone give you a starting point and step by step instructions. For example, there are pre-made themes for WordPress that give you a starting point for look and feel. There are studies that show different success rates based on the most minor things, like where the advertising box is located on your blog.

These themes get you jump-started using what some of the experts use. You really have to do your research and stay on top of the game in order to make a living as a blogger. Simply signing in and creating a post each day is not going to be enough to draw enough people in to make a difference. Since programs don't pay a large amount per click, you need to get more and more people to click on the ads in order to make any cash at this venture. Things like article marketing and advertising via Google's AdWords are other ways of advertising your blog that go beyond your content. AdWords is PPC (pay per click) and article marketing can be done both with paid sites and FREE sites.

But, you can feel great knowing that there is a possibility you can make a little cash blogging. Basically, the more time you put into the blog and researching the advertising programs, the better off you are going to be. While AdSense is probably one of the best places to begin affiliate marketing is another way to generate some good money especially concentrating on niche marketing. Just do a search on the topic and you will have a handful from which to choose.

After you get everything up and rolling, you will be happy to know it doesn't take as much work down the road as the initial setup requires. Soon you could sit back and watch the money roll in without doing much at all!