The first place to start for a beginner, is what is a blog? Well a blog is really short for web log (web log). So that means you are logging information on a continuous basis over time, and putting this on a website with a specific time and date associated with that information.

The information you or your business write on your blog can be anything from stories about what you are doing, for example a travel blog (like a travel diary), or just information such as the type of information I put up on my blog. Or it could even be a blog where you just share your views and could even result in you starting an entire online community around your blog.

Interesting thing is that many news sites like SMH.com.au run on a blog like setup, because new information on the latest news is always being added to the site.

Ok – now you know what a blog is, how can we use them to make money. Well, firstly blogs are very easy to setup and manage. There are some very popular blogging platforms, like Wordpress, Blogger and Myspace that allow you to easily create your own blog. You can then start putting up your own content and information on whatever topic you want to write about. Why not register for a blog right now and see how easy it is. I am running this blog off Wordpress – but remember, the site is wordpress.org not wordpress.com.

How to Make Money Blogging?
Now that you know how to blog, it’s time to make money blogging. Here are a few easy ways in which you can generate blog income:

1. Advertise yourself and your own products:
   Use your blog to market and sell your own products, like ebooks, tutorials or premium content (through a suscription). This is obviously the best option for you in terms of generating the highest profit margin, because you are selling your own product or services.
2. Advertising: You can sell space on your blog. Since initially your blog will not be well known, you can establish ad programs through Google’s AdSense (puts Google Adverts on your site), YPN and BlogAds.

   The more traffic your blog generates, the more likely people will be to click on the adverts. A system like Google Adsense will pay you for every click on their ad – nice way to make money right?

3. Affiliate programs: This refers to placing links of various companies on your blog. You can get paid in one of three ways – pay per click (you get paid every time someone clicks on an ad on your blog), pay per lead (you get paid every time someone visiting your blog clicks a link, goes to another website and registers there) and pay per sale (you get paid every time a visitor to your blog clicks a link, goes to another website and purchases something there).

   You could go to Amazon.com or Linkshare.com or clickbank.com (see my video on clickbank on another post) to find affiliate websites to monetize this concept.You will notice some links to Generator Software on the right of my blog – these are affiliate links.

4. Donation: If you have a loyal readership, you can ask for donations to support various causes. You could set up an online collection of donations trough PayPal.
5. Blog networks: You could think of joining a blog network and receive an income for writing content.
6. Sell subscriptions: You could make your blog a “subscription-only” or “membership-only” one, provided you have premium or exclusive content. You can use membership management software like amember.com to manage this for you – and then you just charge people to get access to your content.  Even easier, is just charge people through Paypal, and then password protect your blog.  Only give the password to those that have paid to get access.
7. Sell your blog: Once your blog is well established, you can make money by selling your blog to a larger, reputed Internet company. 

So there you go, a great way to create a website using a blog and then 7 ways you could make money from it.

HOT TIP:  Use your blog to build a list of people interested in your website, business or products or services.  This means you can market to these people every time you update your blog, have a new product or service to sell… but also, if you have a large database of interested people, makes your blog fetch a higher price if you decide to sell : )

———————————————————————
Learn More Simple Ways to Make Money Online.
Get a FREE Ticket* to My Next Live Training Event visit www.timlivenow.com
———————————————————————
* Terms and conditions apply – see timlivenow.com for details.

My mentor and coach, Brett McFall has often said, when you are running or setting up a succesful online business, you want to be ” The General of the Army, Not the Soldier in the Trenches”, but what does he mean exactly?

Well first of all, I agree entirely, and although I am not always perfect at implementing this simple statement myself, I want to point out to you, that you don’t need to know everything about internet marketing to create a business online nor use the internet to accelerate your current business.

Watch this short video, where I explain a great system called Elance.com, where you can basically find the professionals you need to develop the various components of your online business. This may be as simple as an sale pages creation and setup, to setting up your page to accept payments. Remember, if you don’t know how to do it yourself and want to stay focused on the things you are good at, then this is a great solution.

——————————————————————–
BONUS!
After watching this video, and as an extra asset for being a subscriber
to my newsletter, I want to give you this little tool, to help make things
easier for you when using Elance.

Download Now! (PDF)

——————————————————————–

Have you every thought – how am I going to get traffic to my website? I don’t have any exerience using Google Adwords, in fact I have no idea about Google and how to get my website to rank on Google. Well, using this approach could really save you some money and in fact could produce some great results for you.

Whether you have your own website or you are trying to promote an affiliate website, this video could seriously help you drive traffic – and the best part is – it won’t even have to cost you a cent!

PS. If you are an affiliate for any websites, either through Clickbank.com or directly with a website that you are promoting, this can also be a great way to get traffic and create affiliate income. Basically, write articles to submit to article directories like Ezinearticles.com giving really good information for the market you are targeting. Then at the bottom of the article, copy and paste your affiliate link (hoplink in the case of Clickbank) so that people can find out more information as a result of reading your article. In Ezinearticles.com, you would include the link in the Resource Box.

HOT TIP: You can hide the fact that your link is an affiliate link, particularly if it is hoplink, by using this HTML code to create your link.

<a href=”paste_your_hoplink_here” target=”_blank”>www.pastetheaffiliateswebsitehere.com</a>

For example
<a href=”http://tilkogroup.bryxen4.hop.clickbank.net/?tid=IMTG001″ target=”_blank”>www.keywordelite.com</a>

So the end result would look something like this at the end of your articles.
Eg. I have an article on using keywords to find a niche market, and I end my article like this:
Did you find this article helpful. Keyword Discovery Tool will help you find some great keywords – check it out here.
www.keywordelite.com

Until next time – here is to your internet marketing success!

Watch this video that I have prepared for you on how to make money without a website – that is right, without you even having a website. Click the play button below.

Let me know your thoughts on this video by leaving your comments below.