Posts Tagged ‘make money blogging’

Well, I got some great input, and did a lot of research, and I’ve decided on which niche I’ll be doing.

Technology.

For sub-niche, I’ve decided that I’m going to go with a general technology blog.

My reasoning for this is simple, but I’ll go into detail regarding what swayed me to go with this.

For one thing, technology is something that I’m interested in. When it comes to blogging, and anything else really, you need to be motivated. To be motivated, you need to be interested. If your not interested in the subject your blogging about, and I’ve talked about this at length before, you just not going to succeed. Because deep down, the money you might make will not be enough of a motivator for long.

Another reason why I went with technology is because it’s a big money making niche. Because of the fact that it is such a large niche, it will be easier to find advertisers for a technology blog as opposed to a blog about hairbrushes. Along with this is the fact that many people are interested in technlogoy, making it an easier niche to find readers for.

But, there are not just Pros to this niche. One con is the fact that there are already a ton of blogs on technology, such as TechCrunch, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc. For this reason, it will be touch to break out onto the scene. But I have some unique ideas and plans for this, so I think we’ll be fine. More on that later.

One other great thing about a technology niche blog is that I can find a lot of things to write about, so we won’t be stuck with nothing to write about.

Well, that’s it! My reasons for my niche choice. Now remember, thsi doesn’t automatically mean that you should go with a technology blog, but there just tips that you can use. Look at all the pros and cons of your niche. Write them down even. Be 100% sure that’s what you want to do before you commit yourself, and right off the bat, you’ll set yourself up for success.

First off, I want to apologize for the delay, but my grandma has not been doing well at all, and I’ve been at the hospital almost every day, so it’s been tough on the family. But I’m taking time to write this up, as it’s important I think.

The time has come for use to move onto the first step of the MonkeyBlogger Challenge. Picking a niche. Now, this is one of the toughest, and most crucial steps when it comes to starting a blog or website with the goal of selling for profit.

So for our blog, that’s the first thing we want to figure out. What is it we want to do with this blog? What do we want to promote? A product? A service? Is is a news blog? Thes are all things we need to consider.

I’ve done a lot of research and thought regarding this, and I’ve decided to go with a news blog. But the next step is choosing what type of news blog. Considering there are many news blogs, I don’t want to be too general with my niche.  For example, I wouldn’t go for a blog like www.tuaw.com, which covers everything Apple, but something like www.appleiphoneapps.com, which covers just iPhone apps.

So I’ve picked four general niches, and I’m looking for the help of my readers to pick which one to go with, and then what sub-niche to go with. So, in the comments, leave which of the four you think I should choose and why, as well as some sub-niche ideas. I’ll consider all and then choose what to go with, and we’ll discuss that in another post.

So without further adu, here are the four niche choices.

1. Technology
2. Music
3. Television
4. Sports

Now it’s time for your input.

Alright well, no real post today, just some news and updates I think are useful.

For one thing, the Alexa is dropping, which is awesome, as of today we are down to 239,024, we’ll be in the 100,000s very shortly and under 100k as well! This is a great feat, and I’m looking forward to that day.

Also, the votes are coming nicely for the first MonkeyBlogger Challenge. So far, the “Create a blog and get it earning $100 a month” is winning, and the voting will end in a few days, so get your votes in quick! Once the voting ends, we will start working on the challenge. I will cover my process in choosing a niche, domain, theme, customizing, content, promotion and monitizing. I will post updates more than once a week on the blog’s progress and we will see where this takes us.

In other news, my shoulder is healing well, doctor says in 8-10 weeks I’ll be recovered fully so that’s good news. Also, I will be going out of town in a few days for a week or so, but I will make sure to take my notebook with me and keep the blog running and start on our challenge. I think that this will add a new level to the challenge, showing that it can be done anywhere.

I want to thank all of you for sticking with me and the blog during my hard times, and rest assured, once this challenge starts, you will learn more about blogging and running and promoting a blog than you ever had. Why? Because it will be real. It will be a case study. And best of all? You will be involved. You’ll have a say, you’ll know what’s going on, and why, and I think it will be great.

Hey guys, I was just thinking about this, and I decided to write something up about it.

In this world, people are lazy. Including me. Everyone grumbles that they can’t make any money, they can’t run a successful website, blah blah blah. But most everyone’s problem is not trying hard enough, or not trying at all!

I know this is more make money online related than blogging, but it really does apply in anything.

I personally have been in this boat. This, “I can’t make money online” boat. But you know what?

I tried. I actually just worked! I found an idea that sounded promising, and I said to myself, “Why not just give it a try? What’s the harm?” And it worked. I made over $500 in 3 days, doing not much work but the start up, and it made me realize that I just haven’t really been trying. Been putting myself out there, been taking a chance. And that’s been my problem. Fear. Fear of failure, losing money, doing something stupid. But when I just tried what I had already been told worked, it worked even better than I could have imagined.

Set Goals

When your trying to achieve something, be it a new computer, a solid paycheck, or just some spending cash, you really need to set goals. You can’t say to yourself, “I need a $2,000 computer and in 2 weeks, I will have the money.” But instead, set baby step goals. Try and make $100 in a month, then $100 a week, and then maybe even $100 a day! But don’t set huge goals without intermittent goals, otherwise, you’ll be discouraged when you can’t reach your goal quickly, or at all!

Don’t Let Failure Bring you down

You will fail. I know it’s mean to say, but at some point in your career, online or offline, your going to mess up, make a mistake, do something wrong. But if you don’t continue on, and persevere, you’ll never get anywhere.

Just DO IT

Enough is enough. Just get out there, and try something. Try your hand at affiliate marketing, outsourcing, whatever! Just try. Because in the long run, you’ll be glad you did. I sure as heck am.

This post was guest blogged by Shannon Lilly of Infected by Bugs, a blog that teaches you how to make money online. If you would like to guest blog for MonkeyBlogger, I am still looking for more and you can email your posts to mark[at]monkeyblogger[dot]com. Thanks!

I often wonder why more people don’t take advantage of adding a blog to their websites. I know a blog can be tough to upkeep but it really only take 1-2 posts per week to do that. Only a few of us phycos make posts every day (me of course).

However I believe if business owners as well as personal site owners understood the importance of a blog they would get one up post haste. I am guilty of not putting

blogs on several of my sites or I have put a blog up but never update it. This is what you call (over worked and under paid blogging) but its really no excuse at all!

Today I want to talk a little bit about how to add some pizazz to your blog and get people interested in reading it, subscribing to it and even buying ads from you!

- Get Them To Actually Read Your Posts: Sometimes its difficult to determine why visitors don’t actually read your blog, however there are some things we can do to intrigue visitors to read more. You can place images, video and other forms of media further down in your posts to excite your readers and hopefully they will stick around to read the whole post if not then just the highlighted areas where video and images are appearing.

So far I haven’t had much trouble or complaints about my posts being boring or anything of that nature and I get lots of page views which tells me people are reading. That brings me to another tip we can do to each post to get readers more involved. Basically whenever you can without it looking spammy link to other posts from your new posts, this allows the search engines to find older posts easier and I guarantee your page views per month will jump if not double just by doing this.

- Get Them To Subscribe Already: When you think about subscribing to a blog multiple thoughts may come to mind, however one important factor is (why would they need to sign up?). What are you offering your visitors who actually subscribe, anything at all?

If you look at some of the bigger bloggers in the MMO niche you will see nearly all of them offer a free ebook of some kind from the blog owner on how to make money online, improve seo or other related topics. These ebooks are highly wanted because you are after all reading a ebook written by the pro blogger himself.

My suggestion is that you go ahead and offer a similar ebook or free product to everyone who signs up to your rss feed. Don’t be afraid to put a nice image and small text description about the ebook in your subscribe section on the front page of your blog (I hope you have it their). I can pretty much guarantee people will sign up and possibly tell their friends about you and your blog / ebook if its of good quality and worth reading.

- Start With The End In Mind: Well there you have it, a couple tips to wet your soda appetite. Each of these techniques have worked for me and I am confident they will work for you to. Be sure and share your experiences / opinions with us by commenting below!