How to Create a Blog That Earns You Money

Creating a blog that earns you money is easy with Google. You can use your knowledge or life experience to create original content that can drive traffic to your blog and earn you ad revenue.

Here's an overview of what you will need to get started:

• A Computer with an internet connection (duh)
• A Google Account
• A new blog on blogger.com
• Your name address and a phone number (to get paid)
• A credit card to purchase your own domain name (optional)
• A subject to blog about

Step 0: Create Your Google Account

Many of you might already have an account with Google. If you do, skip to step #1.

You will need a Google account in order to use blogger.com as well as sign up for AdSense - Google's advertising service. To sign up visit google.com/accounts, once you've got your account you're ready to get started.

Step 1: Creating a blog on Blogger.com

• The way that you will make money is by hosting ads on your blog with Google AdSense. To create a blog, visit blogger.com and sign up and create a new blog.
• Before you get started, make sure you've picked a theme you will be blogging about, I chose to blog about making things work, computer tutorials and such. You can blog about anything that interests you. This is important and will keep you coming back to create more content (making you more money).
• Create your new blog. Make sure to give it a name that will be memorable both to you and your visitors. You will want the name to be related to what you're blogging about.
• Choose your template. The really doesn't matter all that much choose something your visitors will be able to read easily.
• Finish creating your new blog and visit your settings.

Step 2: Using a custom domain with your new blog (Optional)

If you would like to go the free route, skip to step 3. If you're interested in purchasing a domain name to go with your new blog continue on.

• Adding a custom domain to your blog can add an additional level of trust and professionalism for your visitors. If you will be directing people to your website (and not just search engine visitors), you will want an easy to remember domain. You can sign up for a new domain without ever leaving the blogger web page.
• Under the publishing tab in your blog settings, select the "custom domain" option.
• You will be taken to a page where you can select your unique domain name (make it memorable!).
• Purchase your domain name and link it to your blog. You will be using Google checkout to sign up and pay for your domain. Currently domains are $10 a year, a great price.
• Once you are done linking your blog to your new domain, get your new blog monetized so you can make some money. Note, your new domain will day a few days to become active, you can still visit our blog through the standard blogger address until then.

Step 3: Create your content!

You will never make any money on your blog unless you have content for your visitors to read. So get creating. Here are a few tips,

• Write often. If you're new to blogging set aside a few hours a week to create new blogs. You can even hammer out several blogs at the same time and set blogger to publish them at a later date.
• Make your content interesting with pictures. Add images in your blog posts to illustrate what you're talking about. You can even embed videos from sites like youtube.com.
• Advertise your blog to your friends and through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. The more people that view your blog, the more ad revenue you will be able to accumulate.
• Link to similar blogs with a sidebar widget. Sometimes you can get the attention of other bloggers and they will add you to their blogroll. This sends more traffic to your blog.
• Find a niche. Try and think of content that you can create that will be something others are searching for. Even better if there is not a lot of blogs or websites about your topic.

Step 4: Monetizing Your Blog with Google AdSense

Now we are going to set up your blog to make some money! The way Google AdSense works is that it scans your blog content for key words and uses them to generate text and image ads based on your content. When visitors stumble upon your blog and click on your ads, you make money (and no, you can't make money by clicking your own ads or getting others to do it for you, Google will find out and you won't get paid).

• In your blogger settings, visit the "Monetize" tab. You will be asked to create a Google AdSense account. Follow the tutorial to create your account. You will need to enter your name and address so Google will know where to send the check.
• After you have successfully created and linked your AdSense account to your blog, you will be able to choose where to place the ads on your blog.
• Once you have selected where to place your adds, you can also set up ads in your website feed (RSS feed) and use Amazon's Associates program to make even more cash.
• If you are starting your blog from scratch, you will need to have a considerable amount of content to get started, Google needs context before it can place ads on your site.
• After you submit your request, it will take a few days to get your Google AdWords working on your blog, so keep writing those posts.

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