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"Get paid to blog!" Every article or advertisement should have some fine print after those words, to the effect that if you already have a blog which enjoys a wide readership, then you can make serious money for blogging. When a person with a common, little-read blog considers making money with a blog, they are apt to end up feeling cheated.

The bloggers with real income potential didn't start their blog to make money, but because they were passionate about the subject of their blog. Yes, their blogs have a subject, and a fairly narrowly defined one. A blog that posts about cat care one day, Pres. Obama's Third World abortion policy the next day, and the New York Yankees on the third won't have a chance to develop a readership. Further, a blogger who picks a topic- say Britney Spears- based on a high search engine ranking for those words is competing with thousands of other would-be money bloggers as well as legit Britney fans or critics.

The blogger that wants to have a popular blog must also be a good marketer. He must know which blog promotion efforts pay off, and which just offend readers and make the blog less popular. He must also be very persistent with his blog, posting every day. Bloggers who take a couple of months off don't have a chance to become popular bloggers.

How do you tell when your blog has become popular? Check out the top blogs on similar topics. Do they ever mention you or link to your articles, not because you've asked them to, but because what you wrote was too good not to share? Look at your visitor stats. Have you ever had 1000 visitors to your blog in one day? Look at the comments on your blog. Have you ever had 50 comments on a single blog post? This is how you can tell if your blog is popular enough to make good money.

I must confess that my own many blogs are not that popular. Not just the one written in Volapk, an obscure artificial language with about 15 speakers, but my other blogs such as my politics blog and my science fiction blog rarely generate much notice. I do work on improving my blog, but the money- maybe 12 cents in a year- I generate from Google ads doesn't compare with the money to be generated writing articles for Helium..com or Associated Content.

One 'get paid to blog' opportunity that I would urge you to pass up is blogging at Today.com. I started a blog there because they promised you a dollar for each post on your Today.com blog. But you had to wait until you reached $50 to get paid. In addition,

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