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The whole purpose of you reading this article is because you are a beginner and you are looking for some advice suitable for beginners wishing to make money online from blogs. You are overwhelmed by the amount of technical speak and advice. You don't have the time to search this site and that, nor the inclination at this stage. You simply want to get a blog set up and take that first step on the road to success. I am therefore not going to make suggestions for you, I am going to tell you how to do it.

The first step is to decide upon what the subject of your blog will be. Choose something very specific that is important to you, that you enjoy and that you know you have a lot of potential writing material about for a long time to come. It may be your favourite sports team, your favourite singer, the arts and crafts hobby you enjoy - any one of an endless possibility of subjects. Take some time, however, to make sure that you choose the right subject that you are passionate about.

It is now time to sign up to a blogging site. I have no hesitation whatsoever in referring you to Blogger, who are part of Google (heard of them?) They are by far and away the best site for beginners to the blogging world. Avoid particularly WordPress at all costs. This site is overly technical, extremely user unfriendly and has a list of do's and don'ts as long as a very long arm! It is totally unsuitable for beginners and could turn you off blogging altogether - it almost did for me!

When you get to Blogger's home page, you will have the option to "Take a tour." I would highly recommend that you do so and get a feel for the site before you begin anything. Only after this should you sign up, choose your template as prompted and name your blog. The name and web address which you attach to your blog are very important, particular the latter (the URL.) The URL is something which can never be changed and will be used by the search engines to find you online. If, for example, your blog is therefore about pigeon racing, the part of the URL which you will be asked to determine should be something like "pigeonracing" or "pigeon-racing."

You are now at the stage of making your first post. There is no requirement to write a ten thousand word essay, here - in fact you would be ill-advised to do so. Blog posts should be short, snappy and to the point. Don't use up all your material in one go and possibly frustrate your reader at the same time. You are attempting to catch the reader's attention and ensure they return to your blog at a later date to find out more.

You will subsequently have the opportunity to "tag" your posting. Tags are "keywords" and phrases which search engines use to find websites and blogs. You should therefore choose a few which are very relevant to the subject of your blog and appear regularly within your blog. "Pigeon," "racing" and "pigeonracing" are good examples for the mythical blog referred to above.

Select the option to preview your blog. Comb through it for spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or anything which you would like to change. It is possible, however, with Blogger to go in to edit mode and amend your posting at any time so if there is something you think of later which doesn't merit an entirely new post, this is the option to choose. Remember now to select "Publish" and your Blog is live to the world.

It is now time to sign up for Google Adsense. Again, you will be guided through the process and that of how to attach your adsense ID to your blog. This is essential as it is the first way in which you are looking to make money on your blog. People clicking on the ads generates you revenue, though this varies hugely depending upon the type of ad. It is very important to remember that you should never click on your own ads - Google will find out and ban you from the programme for doing so.

When your adsense id is set up on your blog, you have to create an adsense panel or two on the actual blog itself. From your Blogger home page, or "Dashboard," select "Layout" from underneath the title of your blog. The appearance of the next screen will vary hugely depending upon which template you initially selected, but look for the option to "Add a gadget." Click on it and a new window will open. Scroll down to "AdSense" and click on the "plus" sign to add it. Remember to save and then you can "drag" the new panel to wherever you wish it to appear on your blog. You will again have to click the red "Save" button towards the top right of your screen.

You are now at the stage where you have a blog set up, you have adverts from Google appearing on it and you are at the end of the beginning...but you are nowhere near the beginning of the end! You now have to remember to add fresh, relevant posts to the blog on a regular basis, each one suitably tagged. You also have to begin the process of obtaining traffic to your blog by making sure it is optimised with the search engines and hopefully by obtaining inbound links. You have to ensure people find and read your blog and there are an infinite number of ways in which to do so.

Those points, however, are topics for another article and I hope at least I have assisted you in the process of beginning to make money online with your blog.

Learn more about this author, Gordon Hamilton.
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