The Wealth Gang

If you have the initiative it takes to make a little extra money in your spare time, blogging for money is not only one of the best ways to make passive income online. It’s one of the best businesses to start, period. But that’s just my opinion.

I probably don’t need to go into the details as to why an online business is such as great business model, but let’s review some of the key biggest benefits:

• Passive Income: With the Internet, you do the work once, and you get paid for it over and over again.
• Residual Income: There are strategies and income methods that will pay you a referral fee. Often times these referral fees are for monthly membership programs, which will pay you over and over again, as long as that person remains a member.
• Make Money In Your Sleep: Regardless if you are working or not, once you have created your “system” it is producing profits for you 24 hours a day. The Internet is never closed for business.
• Part-Time Profits: This is something that anyone with any experience level can get involved with. Stay-at-home moms and high-income earners can spend 45 minutes a day or over the weekend to build their income empire.
• No-Risk: There are not many business that you can start without spending any money out of pocket. If you fail, who cares! You are that much closer to succeeding.

Now, as far as blogging for money goes… I believe it is one of the more powerful ways to make money online. The reason is two fold:

1. Content
2. Relationships

If you like free traffic like I do, then the best way to do that is to please Google with lots of unique content. There’s no better way to put hundreds of pages on the web than by sitting down every day and writing a new blog post. Google loves blogs. Blogs as they stand are Search Engine Friendly.

They are updated regularly, there is already an internal linking system in place, bloggers tend to write about interesting, valuable content, and help the Internet community find the information they need. That’s why Google loves blogs.

Secondly, the great thing about blogging for money is that there it has a loyalty aspect to your blog. Blogs tend to have loyal readers and followers that brings them back to the site regularly. Very few websites have that characteristic.

Loyal readers means you have the opportunity to build a relationship and trust with your readers, which means they are more likely to purchase or try out things you recommend. Secondly, because they are repeat visitors, you have an ability to profit off of them over and over again. Whether that simply means AdSense revenue, selling them your own product, or earning affiliate commissions.

In addition, you get to know who your readers are intimately. That means you can charge higher advertising rates because you know the demographic of your site and the type of things they respond to, and you can communicate with them to make your website better. What better way to make your blog more attractive by asking your readers exactly what kind of information they are looking for.

Which brings up one last point… your readers help create your content. They comments that are left are picked up by Google and may just include keywords that could attract more visitors. Remember that Google likes websites that are updated regularly? Each time someone leaves a comment, that single blog post is updated and Google has fresh information to put in its search results.

Without question, the most frequent email I receive is asking for advice on how to get more traffic to a blog site. There is not a day that goes by that I have a message in my inbox from someone who says they started a website 3 days ago, have followed all the tips listed here, and can’t get enough traffic.

Here’s the deal. There is no big secret that I’m going to reveal to anyone through an email that isn’t already listed here. There may be specific pointers I can give based on your website and market, but for the most part this topic has already been discussed over and over again. If you were to visit an Internet marketing forum, you’d see the same thing — lots of people asking this question and receiving the same response.

The bottom line is that getting traffic to a blog does not happen by wishing for it. Your three day old site will not get any traffic unless you’ve:

1. Paid for it
2. Generated it

If you want to spend the money on advertising, there is no limit on how much traffic you can get. I’ve had days where I’ve gotten 40,000 new, unique visitors to websites before, but that wasn’t cheap. I’ve also built websites that took 6 months for a single visitors to come to my site by finding me on a search engine, but now that same site is receiving hundreds of visitors a day simply from Google searches — no promotion at all.

You can generate traffic on your own by working at it… the same way we’ve discussed before:

1. Visit forums related to your topic and become a contributing member. Leave your link in your forum signature.
2. Create YouTube videos with PowerPoint and Windows Movie Maker (both free).
3. Build your Twitter, Facebook and Digg profile by being an active member and post back to your website when you have an update.
4. Leave valuable comments on blogs and include your web address where asked for it.

Notice that none of these methods are suggesting your spam. Always provide valuable content that contributes to the community or conversation. A blatant link back to your website will always get your link deleted. For example, if you are going to join a forum (which is a great way to drive traffic to your site), you should become an active and recognized member of the community first. Then add your link to your signature once you’ve established credibility and have been around for a while.

In addition to these methods, the best way to get traffic to blog sites is to update your website frequently. Every day, take 20 minutes or whatever it takes for your to write a blog post, and publish. A three day old blog site with a couple blog posts will not cut it. You need to think long-term and big.

Think about this… Google’s biggest job is to make their search engine an easy to use tool for users. That means they have to eliminate spam sites, those that don’t provide value, and those that are not maintained. That means they are less inclined to give your new blog any real value because the likelihood that you will quite in a few days or weeks is high. The truth of the matter is most people do not have the long-term vision or wherewithal to actually create a blog. Most people try it out, don’t see immediate results, and that’s as far as they go.

Update regularly and you’ll eventually enjoy loads of free traffic from search engines. In the meantime, I’m sorry to say, but you willing and hoping for traffic to your blog will not cut it. You actually have to do something to make it happen. There are no secrets here, just the simple fact that the Internet rewards people who work hard.

By the way, I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with Google’s Webmaseter Guidelines. Read it, study it, memorize it. The more closely you stick to their guidelines, the more they will reward your site with better search engine rankings. Take it from someone who has had their fair share of sites banned from Google for violating these terms without even knowing it. You don’t want to go there.

One thing I’ve learned in the short time that I’ve been running The Wealth Gang is that the biggest challenge people face with making money online has nothing to do with the actually making money… it has to do with themselves.

I can’t tell you the number of emails I get from people that tell me they started a blog and haven’t made any money and need my help. Like a fool, I’ll actually go to look at their website and guess what? There’s nothing there.

Pardon my language, but how the hell do you think you can make any money on your website without a freakin’ website? Just because you started a blog and wrote one worthless “About me” page doesn’t entitle you to making any money. The methods I outline need to be put into action. They may seem simple, and that’s because it is.

It is incredibly easy to make money online, but the biggest challenge for people seem to be getting off their butts and doing something about it. If you want a serious change in lifestyle, dedicate 45 minutes a day to building your business. You can make a ton of cash… I’m certain of that and I know a lot of other people that have done the same. Heck, I’ve met people that found this website and started to implement these strategies and are starting to make a nice income in their spare time.

The only challenge is you. Don’t try to “figure it out” and “find the secret.” There is no secret.

The more content you create, the more ways people have to find your site in Google. This won’t come on it’s own unless you pay someone to create content for you. Otherwise you actually have to do it yourself.

I’m very happy to review websites (feel free to leave yours in the comments below), but I refuse to help people that won’t help themselves. It’s a waste of my time and, quite frankly, those people will never succeed so I recommend giving up.

But, if you put in the effort and think about actually trying to build a business rather than figuring out how to crack some code that doesn’t exist, you will actually make money. It is possible, but you have to make that reality possible for yourself.

If you haven’t taken the steps to start making real money, start right now. Refer back to Building Your First Website…

If you’re hard at work and waiting for the big payoff, hang in there. It will come. The Internet has a mysterious way of rewarding those who work hard. And if you need a little inspiration, check this out…