Before you can start making money with a blog, you need to take a long term view of what is involved. Blogging is an ongoing process, and you should not expect a blog to produce instant riches.
Over time you can make a good amount of money with a blog, but first you need to create a blog people can find and want to visit. When it has a lot of visitors, when it has interesting posts, and when it has a Page Rank, then you can start making money from Google Adsense or other advertising network. You can also earn a good blogging income from affiliate commission, referrals and paid-to-blog posts.
* Give your blog a title and a theme.
The title and theme of your blog should be associated with the type of products or programs you want to promote. You can make money from affiliate marketing, and gain referrals, by posting reviews that give a personal endorsement of each affiliate product and program.
If you intend making money from ads and banners, a niche blog is far more lucrative than a general purpose blog. Having a theme attracts visitors who genuinely want to read what is posted there. On a personal blog, only a small percentage of visitors will click on a banner or an ad, but on a niche blog visitors are more interested in what they see advertised. .
* Post regularly on your blog.
A blog post can be an article, a video, a photo, a review or a discussion topic. The latest post will show at the top of the blog, which is automatically updated with each new post.
Each post can be classified into a category so it can be found under a category heading in the sidebar. You choose your own categories and decide where each post should be listed.
You can make money by joining paid-to-post programs when a blog is a few months old, if it has plenty of posts and is getting enough traffic.
* Optimize each post
Each post should have a good title, and tags, using keywords that also appear within that post. Each post will then show up in relevant search engine results. .
If all posts contain effective keywords, a blog that has many posts will easily gain enough traffic to continue making money every month from ad revenue, affiliate income, referrals and paid blog posts .
* Interact with other bloggers
Blogging is not a solitary occupation, It can only be done successfully by being an active member of the blogging community. Read, subscribe and comment on other blogs. You will make more money when your blog gets comments, subscribers and followers in return.
You need some good quality links back to your blog for it to get a good Google Page Rank. You can achieve this by networking and posting links where you are allowed to do so.
If you add some static pages to your blog, have an "About Me" page, where you introduce yourself, say who you are, where you live, what you do. You could also make a page "About This Blog", to introduce the theme of your blog and explain what it is about. Use one of these pages as your main link.
Link your blog to each of your profile pages. At social media sites, bookmark sites and blog directories, you can build up a good number of followers, by using those sites as they are intended to be used.
You can post a link to each individual blog post at networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and FriendFeed. You will only get people to see what is on your blog if you read and respond to what other members post.
* Increase your earning potential from blogging
After a few weeks, many bloggers lose interest in what could have been a profitable long term venture. They simply do not understand that a blog will not start generating a good income immediately. If you don't give up, by the time a blog has hundreds of posts it will easily be gaining traffic from search results, and you can rely on that blog to keep on making money for you.
With more than one active blog, you can link all your blogs and increase their ranking in search engines. Visitors to one blog can click links to view some of the others. You can use the same Adsense code and gain a better advantage by having a different theme for each blog. Then you can find more affiliate products to promote, and make more money from all your niche blogs.