OPTIMIZE YOUR BLOG AND START MAKING MONEY OF IT NOW

Your blog can be monetized and make money from it pretty easily. There are a few things to keep in mind when setting up a blog as a home business and an online income source.

There are many bloggers fail to realize the potential of their blogs, especially, earning money potential and how it can be optimized to generate an online income.

If blogs are being constantly updated it would become a great source of information on any particular topic. Visitors come back over and over again. Good blogs are the ones that are maintained and updated regularly definitely will have steady visitors that keep coming back awaiting the next blog post. This type of blogs has audiences that allowing marketers and advertisers to easily market their products or services to particular groups.

Monetizing a blog is very easy to do by incorporating Google Adsense into it and joining affiliate programs and placing banners where they can be seen. As an affiliate whenever somebody buys a product from a website that they come to from your banner you earn a commission.

AdSense is the name of an advertising service that is administered by Google. It allows webmasters to feature advertising on their websites, and thus generate extra income. Payments are made on the basis of either per click or per every thousand impressions. Geographical location, website content, and other related factors are used by Google to determine which Adsense ads to serve.

It is no secret that one of the simplest ways to make money online is through Google Adsense. Advertisers pay Google every time a visitor clicks on their ads. Then Google pay you for each and every click on the ads that you bring in.

You also can make money from blogging by joining the pay per post program. You write products or services reviews as your blog post and you will get paid for it. Many consumers spend a couple of months to read reviews, testimonials, recommendations, experiences, and consumer opinions on many different products. They may spend hours of reading, comparing, taking notes and asking questions before they made up their mind and spend their money.

The bloggers that reviewed the products, even if they where paid to do it, gave consumers some different perspective that actually helped that company make a sale without using any of its own resources and efforts to do so. It is not necessarily you write good reviews all the time about your sponsor's product or service. You just need to write honest reviews comprising the strengths and weaknesses and your recommendations.

However, bear in mind, setting up blog does not necessarily guarantee you readers. You might be wondering why your neighbor's blog is more popular than yours and how come a three months old blog became so famous that they appear on top ten Google search results. As you know the readers or traffics are the most important elements in making money from blogging.

This is where blog optimization comes in. Any serious blogger would do well to learn the tricks of making their blogs stand out from other similar blogs. Fortunately, blog optimization is not difficult to do, even a newbie can easily learn the ropes.

1. Must look good – ditch those templates in Wordpress and Blogger. They are run-of-the-mill and used-to-death templates. You want traffic? Do some homework and customize your template. You can also modify other free templates by changing the color scheme or adding a logo or two. If you are diligent you can customize by following certain festivals.

One last word; there is a reason why books are printed on white paper in black text. White text on black background throughout your blog may look cool but its hurt on the eyes and that means less readers will return.

2. Keywords - target specific keywords in the title, and in the introduction and closing paragraphs. The body of your article should be written naturally and can be between 250 to 300 words.

3. Be the first – nothing beats this. You need to update your blog as soon as something happens. If you update a couple of weeks after the event happen, it does not do you any good. Even if you just post a lead paragraph and continue later, it is better than nothing at all.

4. Write well – this comes with experience and some talent. And you can learn on the job and make the text readable. Do not post thousand words pieces without proper paragraphs and punctuation. Fonts are also important. Funky font for the title is alright but image if all your posts are full of ‘scribbly' fonts. Not inviting at all. Lastly, make the font size relatively readable. Size 4 is should be avoided.

5. RSS – put up the RSS reader and feeder. This allows blog readers to receive updates on their phones or computers. You will need to create a catchy phrase to entice your readers to read. Aside from this, allow readers to receive updates via email because not everyone is into RSS.

6. Links and pings – if you are blogging about a story, link it to the original story as well as other bloggers' write ups on the same topic. When you do so, you will make those bloggers aware of your blog's existence. It also increases the odds that they will either link to you on that story or on something you blog about in the future. You can also ping your stories at Technorati, FeedBurner, Google Blog Search to let them know you have a brand new blog post on your site.

7. Faster host – waiting for a simple blog page to load is a pain. If you find that your blog takes longer than 30 seconds to load completely, change your host. No matter how compelling your content is, readers are not going to stick around for your blog when they have other choices.

8. Own a domain name – free blog hosts are not guaranteed a lifelong existence. Try and buy your own domain name which is both catchy and easy to remember. Do not worry about losing your ranking when you move to a new domain. Both Blogger and Wordpress allow you to use their hosted blog service while displaying it on your own domain instead of their own branded one.

9. Get with the Web 2.0 content – user generated content is the way to go. You can spice up your blog by sharing your Flickr photos. Youtube videos and installing other interesting widgets. But do not over do it. Keep your pages looking clean and simple.

10. Control your spam – it will be a pain if you do not install a spam filter. A free and good filter would be Akismat. It is able to filter around 90% of your spam. You should also manage trackbacks and regulate comments. You do not want your comment section to be filled with endless links to buy Viagra.