Blogging - Getting Started As A Blogger

Blogging is the practice of posting digital content --be it text, videos, links, graphics and other media-- on the Internet. Simply speaking, it means to maintain a blog. "Blog" is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe web sites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. Blogs range from the personal to the political, and can focus on one narrow subject or a whole range of subjects. This website is a clear example of blog.

In this post I'll be discussing with you how you can get started as a blogger and make money at home by spending few hours daily, blogging. Blogging is one of the easiest area (don't take it literally though) of work from home scheme. However, if you are totally new to this concept, you might have to struggle a little more for the first few months as there are a lot of concepts and things that you'll need to learn and understand to create a successful blog.

I'll be briefing most important concepts in this post and where necessary detail them further in future blog posts. Moreover, as you gain experience as a blogger, you'll learn more and more of these concepts which will help to sharpen your blogging skills.

Creating and Registering a Blog

Unlike in previous decades, creating a blog and registering it has become much more simpler these days. Once you've decided what subject(s) you'll focus on your blog, you can set up one within few minutes. You just need to choose one platform from many alternatives available (both free and paid) and then create a blog there by choosing an appropriate domain name or sub-domain. This blog, Work 24x7, is created/hosted on blogger platform and registered with the sub-domain w0rk24x7 within the blogspot.com domain.

At this point let me remind you that our main aim here is to make money at home. However, that's not our only goal. So, you'll need to choose your platform depending upon this and other overall requirements. But the key to select the best blogging platform, is to choose blogger as this is one of the easiest service to get started and to earn more with little or no investment at all. However, if you have some bucks to spare annually you might want to go for premium services offered by various platforms such as wordpress and weebly.

After signing up on the platform of your choice, select from one of the available templates, that which suits your requirements. You can also buy premium templates if you so desire as they come with extra features and design. The key factor to consider here is to choose a light-weight template, preferably a 2 columns one, with simple font and light colors. You can refine your template further at later stage with tweaks and scripts so don't pain yourself here.

The Next Stage

Once you setup a blog, there's only one major task left i.e to write articles and post them. Please note that with today's technology and improvement in search engines and web, content has become the most important of all. While few years ago bloggers needed to pay heed to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques to be listed in search engines and to increase their page rank (PR), it is a matter of debate in these days. Google over many years has refined it algorithm and has take search to next level where SEO techniques are also immaterial. However, being knowledgeable in this area will indeed be helpful.

Coming to the main point, you'll need to come up with unique and original content in the subject(s) you've choose to write about and publish those content regularly on your blog. What is unique is a subjective matter and it's meaning may vary depending upon various circumstances, however all agree that the content should be original and written on your own words. The key secret is to create a special mix of quality and quantity and keep driving engagement on your blog. You can publish 5 to 10 posts a day or even more posts like some of the large publishers (bloggers) out there Or simply publish few posts a week. This is highly influenced by the area/field about which you blog. For example, a news blog need to publish large quantity of posts covering various happenings of the day each day. Whereas a journal or personal blog may have less frequent posting.

Writing Engaging Original Content

The secret is to be original in every possible way. Past experience in writing will indeed be helpful, but there is always space to learn. As you go on writing and gain experience your skills will sharpen along the way. Please note that the people visit your blog because they love what you are doing, what you write and how you write it. The information comes second to them. This is so because there are many places on the web where such information can be found. The fact that they visit your blog is because of the value addition you make to the information through your style of writing or expression or by providing extra details or using any other techniques that is unique to your blog. I hope that makes you understand the importance of originality or genuineness in your writing(s).

The Final Stage - Monetization

Monetization of your blog is an important step to meet our main goal -to make money at home. We as a publisher will monetize our blog by display advertisement on our blog. There are many ways to get advertisement and there are few important factors that you'll need to consider while obtaining advertisements for your blog. Moreover, there are various Ads Management programs out there who are ready to obtain high quality, matching advertisement for your blog and managing their rotation. One of the widely popular service among those is Google Adsense program which is highly recommend as it has wide range of payment systems, is available in many countries and also supports blogs on various major languages apart from English.

There are various factors to be considered here as well. You're better off displaying contextual advertisements as they have high click through rates (CTR) and ultimately increasing your earnings. Another important aspect is whether the payment option available at your region (or location) is supported by the Advertiser(s) or Ad Management Program(s). Lastly, there is the placement of advertisement in your blog which plays major role. 

Apart from above, there are various concepts associated with moetization and its forms. Pay Per Click (PPC), Pay Per View (PPV), Pay Per Action (PPA), Affiliate Marketing and many other forms depending upon which your frequency and quantum of earning varies. I'll be discussing these in detail in future posts. 

Conclusion

From my past experience as a blogger and through various research conducted as a part of this project I can conclude that Blogger.com is the best free blogging platform out there (from work at home point of view; if earning money is not your aim word-press outperforms blogger as it provides lots of customization simply through the use of plugins and add-ons) and Google Adsense is the best advertisement management program available for monetization.

So, as a start, I recommend you to go with these two. Like I've detailed above create a Google Account today (if you don't have it already) and sign in to blogger.com with your Google Account. Once you reach the dashboard create a new blog and get started. Note that Google is quite strict in its quality guidelines and goes through a review of your blog before approving your Ad-sense account. So, before you apply for Google Adsense account you'll need to publish at least 5 to 10 good quality posts on your blog. Afterwards go to Earnings tab in your dashboard and click on Sign Up for Adsense button there. Fill out the form(s) and wait for a week or two for your account to be approved. Once approved you can log in to your Adsense dashboard and manage ad units from there as well as track your earnings. As you can see, all this process will take at least a month before you can display ads on your blog and another few months before you'll actually start to earn money. This will largely be influenced by how much effort you'll put into Blogging. 

That's all to it. Now you've started your work at home career as a blogger. I wish you all the very best in your blogging journey! Happy Earnings.