How to setup a blog & make money - Part 2

If you haven't read the first part of this series, you should now!

Show it to the world

Once you have setup the blog, comes the difficult time where you understand what your readers really like. However, to understand what they think, you need more visitors - So, we are in deadlock situation

Your new blog would be indexed by Google in about couple of days - which basically means appear on Google Search when someone searches for content that appears on your blog.

Labels, Tags - The new Blogger platform supports labels/tags which is basically used to make the searching job easier for the search engines

Technorati is another place where you should claim your blog - which means that you list your blog on that site and tell the Wolrd tht you own it. TECHFLOCK has a technorati page which shows the sites which link to this blog, ranking etc. Lower the ranking, the better. See the most popular blogs

Money Money Money

If you thought was that it was easy to put up a blog and make money - you are COMPLETELY wrong. Money flow can be slow and low - but usually depends on the number of visitors you get to your blog. Most of the bloggers prefer Google's Adsense program which is easiest to setup and get some ads on your site. Google Adsense is a targeted ad system - which means ads displayed are based on the content you write. There are other options such as Text Link Ads which is a flat link based ad system.

After you signup for Google Adsense, you will get Ad Code which you will have to put on your site - Again, the Blogger help would be a good reference on how to integrate those ads on your blog. You will be sent a check from Google once you earn 100$ or more.

My personal advice is to not think of the money to start off, just concentrate on the content and money will flow in - its the same as in all the other disciplines.

How to setup a blog & make money - Part 1

The other day, someone I know asked me How do I make money through blogs. This article will give a overview of how to setup a blog and sprinkle in those ads that will fetch you some moolah. While I don't claim the blog I am writing to be making loads of money, I can certainly tell you how to start off.

This is a beginner's topic, if you know it all, move away...

If you are still here, lets go....

• Write about something you know
  
  Whenever you plan to start a blog, its very desirable that you know what you are going to put in it. For example: Techcrunch mostly talks about Web 2.0 startups and the services they offer. If you know Opthalmology, offer your readers something that others don't or atleast a subset. Basically, what I am saying is be sure of what you are writing and you have enough content and updates to keep it going in the long run.
  
  
• Update as often as you can
  
  People like updates and learn new things. So, you keep your site updated as often with interesting tidbits of information. Provoke them - see the Basic Networking Commands article a little below in this page if you want an example . Non-Controversial is not good enough :-D.
  
  Hey guys, I do know about netcat, arp, arping ...etc etc. I also know about ettercap which can be used to sniff a on switch based network. Thanks for all those comments - I am sure a lot of people benefit from those very insightful comments :)
  
  Sorry for deviating. So, in summary, you write something interesting, thought and comment provoking :) and most importantly useful.
  
  
• Learn as you go
  
  Believe me, you will never make it popular when you begin. It will take time, as long as a couple of years! Be patient and at it always! You will also discover on what to write that brings in you those visitors gradually. For Example: I learnt that, people like to read content filled articles than tidbits and tips that I used to provide on this blog before. Understanding your reader is part of the process.
  
  
• Set up a blog
  
  For beginners, I would certainly recommend Google's Blogger - You will need a Google Account for that. Think of a name to suit what you write. Once you setup the blog, you will be transferred to the Blogger Dashboard from where you can Start Posting Articles. Google maintains an excellent Help section which you should look at as often as you can especially you are new to blogging.
  
  Once you get started with the above things, we will look at how to put in those money making ads in our next part of the series
  
  
  ..To be Continued ..
  

Stickis - the social web annotator

Got an invite to test out Stickis - the social web annotator.

Stickis lets you add blog feeds, build a community based on your "notes" and read other's annotations.

What ?

• You add/subscribe blog feed(s) + you can showcase your own blog/site
  
• Add annotations/notes to whatever urls you like.
  
• Let others "subscribe" to your annotations/network/site and build a big community of readers! Your annotations could be on any site/url.
  
• In future, Stickis promises to restrict the notes subscription to whoever you wish to grant access to - Right now, whoever has subscribed to your network can read your notes.
  
• You can also get alerts whenever someone posts a note

Why ?

• As I understand it now, If you have a site, people get to read your site. You can read other's sites as well through the feeds.
  
• You get to hear opinions through annotations which might provide interesting insights of what people actually reading and commenting on - this could be an equivalent to the comments that you see on various sites - but, your subscribers will get to read all your comments at one place.. Ah... digg + comments ?
  

Implementation

• You can either add new notes through the website or through the extension that they provide only for Internet Explorer. That meant I had to reboot to Windows :(
• However, they plan to add a Firefox extension soon.
  

Overall experience was completely different and it took sometime for me to understand what exactly I had to do :).

Update (Dec 4)

Jean from Stickis has left a comment that they now have a Firefox extension. Will try it out! Thanks !

Try it out and see if you like it - for now, I am gonna skip this one - atleast I get a Firefox extension

Travel Weblog

Don't know how I missed discovering this blog from Weblogs Inc.

Gadling is a blog about travel and sure it does cover a lot of countries and a whole lot of activities that you can do in those countries. Has a lot of very useful information. I am already beginning to love this blog :)

Check it out!