I’m writing this blog post… the same blog post that so many others have written on other blogs because I believe I have something new to offer. I bet there are at least 100,000 other blog posts on the Internet right now with a topic similar to this one “Can you make money blogging?” And I bet 98% of them say basically the same thing (yes, you can make loads of money blogging)… written primarily by people who are making little to no money blogging.

So let’s talk about the average blogger, then we’ll compare the average blogger, who makes little to no money, to “professional” bloggers who make a good deal of money.

The Average Blogger:

- Has an interest in the topic he or she writes about.
- Doesn’t really have any form of business strategy in place other than “write as much as possible” and try to build links.
- Worries WAY too much about how many people are subscribed to their RSS feed and doesn’t even build an email list.
- Will go about 1 year (max) … realize he or she isn’t making much money and quit posting to that blog.

The Successful Blogger:

- Has a PASSION for the topic he or she writes about.
- Has a solid plan for his or her business, in which his or her blog is usually only a PART of.
- Concentrates on using his or her blog as a platform to build his or her list!
- Will not quit, even if little to no money is made because of passion and confidence.

I predict one of the first 5 comments below will be similar to “But Darren Rowse of ProBlogger doesn’t seem to concentrate on building his list.” And you’re right… or at least it’s seems that way by glancing at the current layout of his blog. My answer to that, he’s leaving ALOT of money on the table and for every one successful blogger who doesn’t have a list, I’ll give you 10 Successful bloggers who do!!

Give me 100,000 RSS subscribers and 100,000 Email Subscribers all in the same niche and I Guarantee you I’ll make $100,000 more with the email subscribers.

The primary reason I decided to write this blog post is because I see SO MANY people spending hours every single day writing blog posts with no real plan… no visitor retention other than RSS… no passion.. Yet they have a dream of blogging full-time and being a “Pro Blogger.”

If you are one of these bloggers please don’t let this post discourage you. It’s meant to do the OPPOSITE of that! I hope it helps you understand what you need to do to make your dream a reality!

And lastly, I want to make one other thing clear. Owning a blog or multiple blogs and being a blogger are two different things! Blogs are useful platforms in many different Internet Marketing Business Models like Niche Marketing. So if you’re a niche marketer (for instance) using blogs for your mini-sites, this doesn’t apply to you. This only applies to those who consider themselves bloggers and have one or two “flagship” blogs where they frequently update.

When you put good info out there, good things come back to you!

But HOW do you consistently produce good, helpful content?

The answer to this question depends on your model. Just like I have my “Info-Product Success Formula” (I no longer own this product) split into two different “paths” most people either work on authority sites or niche sites and the way in which you produce killer content will depend on which path you’re taking.

Authority site – This is where my little “secret” comes in, which I mentioned in the title of this post. Here it is: ALWAYS write content as if your ONLY audience are friends and family… people you deeply care about! I guarantee the content you produce from there on out will be 100%, 200% even 500% better than if you were writing what you think your audience wants to hear. Think of one person who you love enormously. Imagine if that person wanted to know everything about the niche you’re targeting. NOW, start writing for that person!

Niche site – The importance of “KILLER” content on your niche site is determined by your ultimate goal. If you are just creating sites for adsense income the quality doesn’t need to be “killer.” It just needs to be legible and somewhat helpful. But if you want to build a list with your niche site and/or establish a long-term relationship with your readers, you need to go back and take the same advice I gave for authority sites.

That’s it for today. Short and sweet, but very powerful if you actually do it!

image credit: striatic

“Writers Block!”

I get it, you get it and everyone else who writes anything, whether online or offline, gets it too. It just sucks, doesn’t it?

It’s what happens when you know you need to write an article, blog post, web page etc. but you just can’t think of something good to write about.

Although I, myself, still get it, it happens much less frequently these days because of the advice I’m about to give you.

The following are the 5 best ways in my opinion to come up with topics to write about online when you’re suffering from your own unique case of “writer’s block:”

1. Go to one or more forums in your niche. Discussion forums are probably the BEST place to go to find topics in your niche that your readers will want to hear because forums are full of people just like your customers and in some cases they may BE your customers and/or readers! Check out the “hot” threads. The threads with LOADS of replies. These are awesome topics to write about!

2. Ask your subscribers what they want you to write about! Sending out a survey is the best way to do that. Offer something for free to those who complete the survey or some kind of contest. Asking a visitor what he or she wants to learn from you is about as accurate as it gets. You can offer the survey to your list if you have one, on your homepage etc.

3. Watch your competition! Particularly the competitors who are authoritative in your niche. They got that authority somehow and it’s a good bet their readers like what they are writing about, so looking at their content will usually give you some good ideas as to what you should be writing about.

4. Actively participate in social networking! Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc. are social networks that provide a unique opportunity to not only interact and get to know others in your niche to JV with etc. they are also full of potential readers, clients, customers and leads! Any chance you get to interact with these people is good. Social networking is a great way to find out what they’re interested in within your niche.

5. Look at what you’ve written in the past that seemed to have done well (if possible.) It won’t give you an exact topic, but it will give you an idea of some of the things you know your readers respond to historically.

Although some of these points may seem obvious or basic to you, hopefully you can refer back to this post next time you get writer’s block and hopefully they help find an idea for you:

(Keep in mind, if your business model targets long-tail phrases with niche marketing, it’s not about finding topics. Your keyword research will yield your topics for you. But for just about any other model this advice should come in handy.)

img credit: re_birf

But, I know there are many people out there who still aren’t sure, so if you’re one of those people, I’d like to tell you the basics of a very cool and very popular technology… I felt like saying “new” technology, but RSS has been around for a while now.

I’ve been marketing online for several years now, but I didn’t get started blogging until about 3 years into all of this. When I started my first blog I had no idea what RSS was and to be honest, I barely knew what a blog was

But I started reading other blogs, got mine established and learned the basics… now I’ve been successfully blogging for a couple years.

What is RSS?

RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” although other say it’s “Rich Site Summary.” I’m not sure if there is a different between the 2, but for myself and other basic “users” it really doesn’t matter.

I’ll explain with an example. You find a good feed reader, like Google Reader or Bloglines (free.) Then you get the RSS feed from your favorite blogs and/or news sites and add the RSS feed URL to the feed reader and you can keep up with your favorite blogs all in one spot (within the feed reader.) You will be alerted only when there is a new post, instead of manually visiting each site to check for updates.

There are other uses and RSS isn’t specific to blogs and news sites, but they are the main 2 types. An RSS feed is simply a URL and if the site has an RSS feed (almost ALL blogs and news sites do) they’ll have an image, link or both somewhere on their pages for you to grab.

How to Subscribe to a Blog’s RSS Feed

There are a few different ways to subscribe to an RSS feed; an easy way and a REALLY easy way.

The Easy Way – The process is very simple. Just visit the blog you would like to subscribe to and locate their RSS feed. In the case of this blog you’ll see it in the right navigation menu toward the top… a big, orange button that says “RSS.”

In FireFox you can right-click that image/link and select “Copy Link Location” from the drop down menu. If you use another browser and you’re not sure how to copy a URL, just click on the RSS image/link and when it opens a new window, just copy the entire URL in the address bar of your browser. In the case of this blog, you would be copying:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/ez-onlinemoney/KVBf

Once you’ve copied the URL you just need to add it to your feed reader. There are many different feed readers out there, but probably the 2 most popular are Google Reader and Bloglines… both are very easy and straight forward in regards to adding a feed.

The REALLY Easy Way – This is your best option if you don’t want to mess with a feed reader, but unfortunately not all blogs and news sites offer this option. Many blogs do though, including this blog. I’m talking about subscribing to a feed via email. Instead of the feed being sent to your feedreader account, it’s sent to your email.

To subscribe to a feed via email, the site must offer it and it will be a simple form asking for your email. On this blog you’ll see that to the right of my orange RSS image… it says “Email Updates.” You just enter your email address and updates will be sent to your email every time a new blog post is published and you’ll also have the option to click the link in the email to visit the actually blog post.

That’s basically it. RSS is a big time saver especially for those who read a bunch of different blogs and/or regularly keep up with the news. Now go ahead and give it a shot

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Image credit: Matt Forsythe’s RSS Icons… for more cool RSS icons see the Ultimate list of Free RSS Feed Icons.

It may be a little hypocritical, but I’ve decided to raise the number of approved comments before dofollow is activated to 9 (previously 3.)

Why I Did It – Although I didn’t previously think the loads of dofollowed links in the comment field of posts were negatively affecting the authority of the blog, I’m starting to think they may actually be. Not so much the pagerank “leakage” because I’m fairly confident that my internal linking structure is maintaining most of it, but more with the linking out of low-quality sites!

So, for those of you who comment regularly you’ll be getting more authority through your comment links on this blog, but those who just drop by, leave a comment just to get a link then leave, yours will be nofollowed

This post wasn’t written to call anyone out or criticize anyone. My goal here is to actually help some people expand their business by bringing it outside of the “blogosphere.”

Not long ago I wrote a blog post stating that my blog is extremely profitable and important, but it brings in very little direct income.

Unfortunately there are MANY bloggers out there who’s main goal in this business is to bring in a solid income solely through blogging.

Is it possible? Absolutely. Darren Rowse does it, although I’m sure ProBlogger isn’t his only income. And many more make a very nice income from their blog.

But there are MANY more who run highly successful blogs, which bring in only a small portion of their overall direct income.

There are far too many bloggers out there who think Internet Marketing is all about blogging. The truth is that blogs are very powerful, but very rarely bring in alot of direct income. They bring in loads of indirect income, they help brand people and their business, they provide a “hub” for those businesses and all Internet Marketers should own one. But there is so much more out there and isolating yourself within the “blogosphere” is leaving alot of money on the table!

So here’s your call to action – Keep posting solid info to your blog. Keep building your blog. But don’t rely solely on your blog to create that lifestyle you’ve been dreaming of!

Just because a product is for sale doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just because a product is sold through a long sales letter doesn’t mean it’s a bad product. Just because people are making money by selling products doesn’t mean they’re con artists.

Be a good consumer and be smart about your purchases.

If you don’t want to create a product become efficient in PPC. If you don’t want to me a SEM be a writer… build a list and start building your business.

Don’t worry about what others are doing! If you don’t like it ignore it! If they’re scamming people they’ll get what’s coming to them. If they’re honest they’ll make more money!

You don’t have to be one of those sleazy marketers to make money, but don’t make the mistake so many others make by isolating yourself to the blogosphere. Be a good MARKETER and market!!

I received an email this morning from a good friend of mine, Caroline Middlebrook asking if the comment she recently left was put into the Akismet filter and it was. … [edited at the request of a reader]… I know she would never spam anyone.

Anyway, that’s a good example of how ineffective Akismet really is. So after Andy’s recent decision to drop Akismet and go with Spam Karma, Caroline’s experience and my own experiences I’ve decided to finally give SK2 a shot.

I literally activated the plugin minutes ago, but I can’t imagine it being as ineffective as Akismet.

We’ll see. What are you’re experiences with Spam Karma? Do you like it?

However, the income generated by this blog is very small. If I were to take the direct revenue generated by this blog and apply it to my monthly bills it would not cover them!! But the indirect income would probably pay those bills plus some!

Am I saying blogging is not profitable? Definitely not; it is! But you need to monetize it appropriately. I refer to direct income as income generated by advertising, affiliate offers and other money makers that generate money directly from your blog. I refer to indirect income as income generated by leads etc. you obtained through your blog, which will earn you money down the road.

I use this blog as a leveraging tool more than a direct money maker. It’s a platform for my subscribers to discuss topics, it’s a landing page to collect additional subscribers, it’s actually developed into a hub for part of my business.

What I’m trying to say here is that your blog can make you much more money indirectly than it can directly! Sure, blogs with 20,000 subscribers can make plenty of sales off of one post, but that may or may not be a realistic goal for you.

So, I’ve come up with the following list for those of you who ultimately want to be able to pay your bills with your blog without thousands of RSS subscribers (this ultimately goes back to my previous post on retaining your visitors)

1: Generate leads to a Mailing List – Blogs are a great way to announce new, free reports that you’ve written. As long as they’re valuable, people love to download them. The more leads you obtain, the more potential customers you have.

2: Start a Mentoring/Coaching Program – Mentoring is a huge money maker for many. I don’t personally run a coaching program because I’m concentrating on other aspects of my business and I can help many more people by providing free info to the masses, rather than devoting a good chunk of my time on only a few. However, if done correctly running a mentoring program can bring big money and a blog is an excellent way to get one started!

3: Start a Membership Site – This one speaks for itself. Recurring payments add up! You can start a membership site in just about any niche in the world and there are infinite possibilities with them!

4: Promote Residual Affiliate Products – Same as #3 except you’re not doing all the work. Instead of starting a membership program, find a few you like and join their affiliate program. Residual income affiliate programs are always a big money maker!

As you probably noticed each of these techniques deal with retaining visitors in one way or another! Blogs are a great way to generate traffic and those bloggers who realize the importance of retaining that traffic into an income funnel are the ones who profit the most!!

photo credit: watersgirl

This is going to directly affect how I run this blog, for the better!

Along with the new blog theme that should be arriving soon you’ll be seeing more in-depth, informational posts on the blog. The frequency of posts will be lower, but the quality will be much higher.

The reason for the big change is #1 because I want to help you build your online income by providing more solid guidelines and less “rants” and “musings,” and #2 because I’ll be directing my list to these in-depth posts, much like Jonathan Leger does it.

I’ll definitely continue to concentrate on the blog, but you’ll notice the number of posts will decrease to 2 or 3 per week, rather than the current rate of approximately 6 per week.

Although I’ll continue to monitor my RSS subscribers, I’ll no longer be concerned with that number. I shouldn’t have been worrying about it in the first place!

So stay tuned for a drastic new look and a drastic increase in “educational” posts!

photo credits: triviaqueen

However, for various reasons I’ve decided to stop taking part in memes. This has nothing to do with Terry or his meme, but memes in general.

So I’m going to do something similar to RT’s Unmeme, which Stephen adopted as well, and take part without tagging others.

So the question is: What do you Expect from your Blog?

This one is probably over my head because to be honest with you I don’t expect anything. Terry is actually the guy who installed WordPress on this very blog back in February (I think.) It sat dormant for a few months with a couple throw-away posts on it until I got somewhat serious with it somewhere around April 07.

My initial intentions for this blog were to provide a way to express my own Internet marketing musings, as I had just began to become very comfortable with the whole Internet Marketing thing and I was starting to make some decent money.

I also knew it would be an easy way to keep the SE spiders coming with frequent content updates and an easy way to retain readers, as opposed to a normal, static website.

This blog is nowhere close to being my main source of income. As a matter of fact, I make VERY little money from this blog. I guess it’s somewhat of an ego thing It helps brand my name and I get to help others at the same time.

So I’m not sure if I could really answer the question “What do I expect from this blog?” because I don’t really expect anything.

Obviously I want the traffic to continue to increase and I believe it will, but we all want that. As far as goals though, I don’t think of my blog as a business model, as many bloggers do (unfortunately.)

So many bloggers concentrate far too much time on one or two blogs and 95% of the time those blogs never amount to a steady income, and those that do normally take alot of time to do so.

So the sum it all up; I guess I could say the only expectation I have for my blog is to serve as a valuable resource to those of you who read it. If I make some money along the way, great. However, that’s not my sole intention.