Bloggers generally orient around making money from their blogs . The bloggers who do not seriously consider making money from a blog , do not also mind if they do make money. However the efforts behind making money from a blog may differ. There is no established formulae of making money from a blog. The primary idea is that a blog is a medium to express thoughts ,ideas and knowledge. People do visit a blog for various reasons and generally bloggers do moneti8ze this attention. Making money from a blog is a difficult thing but if considered seriously , it can really prove to be a source of real good income for a blogger. This post is about making money from a blog in 2013.

 

Blog monetization scenario in 2013

Making money from a blog is becoming difficult everyday. 2013 is not an exception, however there are some factors that may affect your blogging monetization aspect very positively. First is the increasing number of internet users and secondly various innovative ideas being introduced to make money from your blog. Like any other industry and work , blogging has its own challenges and good income prospect. It has to be taken seriously as a profession and the key fundamentals of blogging should be carefully mastered to  make money form a blog.

 

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Factors that affect your earning

Before we proceed any further , let us have a look at few factors that can really impact you money making struggle.

#1. Visits to your blog – The most important aspect that will affect you money making from a blog. This is also a reason why SEO has gained importance. Search engines have the capacity to send huge number of visitors that will hard to be considered by building readership alone. Still, the readership that a blogger builds is the only primary source of for a blog and search engines may take time to send visitors because they operate on their own terms.

 

#2. Quality of traffic/visitors – This is one more important factor that affects the earning potential. The geographical location and demographics will impact your earning. Generally visitors from developed nations or visitors who are potential buyer for some product or service are more likely to help you earn more.

 

#3.Reputation of your blog – Reputation of your blog is one more important factor as this will. attract advertisers and sponsors for your blog.

 

#4. Alexa rank – Alexa rank of your blog will be seriously considered by advertisers and ad networks before approving your blog to participate in their program.

 

#5. Interactions – Comment , reactions and social share will also affect traffic to a blog and also the advertisers.

 

Ways to make money from a blog

There are many conventional and newly arrived monetization option for a blogger. Below are few of them.

#1. Affiliate Marketing – Affiliate marketing is a result based money making option in which advertiser or sponsored will pay for a visit or a sale. This is kind of conventional ad networks. Few examples of affiliate networks are as below;

Amazon Affiliate

Many hosting providers, hotels networks, tour operators , software vendor do offer affiliate marketing programs. Bloggers can participate in suitable programs and make money

 

#2. Contextual Ad Networks – Contextual ad network is the most used way of monetizing web properties. Contextual ad networks display ads related to the content of the web page thus creating scope of the ad being clicked by the visitor out of own interest. Contextual ad networks like Google AdSense display ads on other data like searches made by a user etc. Few known contextual ad networks are;

Google AdSense

Chitika

 

#3. Selling Advertisement Space

Bloggers can directly sell ad space on their blogs . There are many services that can help a bloggers sell ad space or even find advertisers. This way of monetizing blogs has gained popularity in past few years. Some examples of agencies that can help you with selling ad space are;

 

Blog Ads

Buy Sell Ads

 

#4. Sponsored Posts – Bloggers can write and publish post for whish they are paid. Known bloggers get more requests for sponsored posts.

 

#5. Sponsored Blogs – Some bloggers write blogs which are dedicated to some topic and completely sponsored by a brand or an entity from the same industry.

 

#6. In Text Link Advertisement – In text links are complementing advertisement option. In this form of advertisements ,certain keywords are highlighted and on hovering or clicking those keywords ads are displayed. Infolinks is a noted in text link ad network.

 

#7. In Image Ads – In this type of advertising, ads are displayed in an image already existing on a webpage. These ads are generally related to the ATL text of the image. Gumgum is a known image ad network.

 

#8. In Video Ads – In this type of advertisements, ads are displayed in an video. The ads can occur before , after or between the video is played. Video hosting site YouTube has its own monetization program for videos.

 

#9. Featured Posts and Related Posts – Bloggers can use services like nRelate to display related posts from their own blog and other networked blog and make money for every visit sent to other blogs while offering related post from their blog.

 

#10.Google  AdSense Custom Search – Google AdSense offers advertisement options in the custom search engines by Google. Bloggers can make money by showing relevant ads in the searches made by users.

 

#11. Accepting Gifts and Donations – Accepting gifts or donations is a way to earn from a blog. Loyal readers who love your blog may offer you gifts and donations.

 

#12. Selling E-Books – Creating and selling online E-books is also a good way to earn. Self publishing has gained popularity in past few years. Programs like Kindle Direct publishing help blogger publish books and make money from it.

 

#13. Merchandizing – Merchandizing a fairly popular blog is also a good way to make money. Merchandizing services like Cafepress can help bloggers set up a store with own merchandized products in minutes.

 

#14. Selling Blog Subscription – Selling subscription to blog can also be a good earning option for a blog publishing highly valued content.

#15. Operate Tutor Program – Operating a tutor program on a blog and charging fees for it is a good money making option for freelance experts.

 

#16. Accept Freelance Jobs From Your Blog – Many bloggers make money by accepting freelance jobs on their blogs. Blogs gain reputation and work for them.e.g. a webmaster can get and SEO job for a blog or a website through a blog.

 

#17. Sell Photos and other media from a blog – Selling photos, videos and other media content can be a good earning option for photographers and creators. Gumroad is a service that helps people sell or make available downloads of valued content.

 

#18. Charitable Programs – Charitable programs offer commission for helping in  raising fund.

 

#19. Fundraisers – Bloggers can set up fundraisers for a cause and raise money.

 

#20. Sell blogging related services – Bloggers add to their knowledge everyday. Over a period of time bloggers can gain extraordinary knowledge and sale their knowledge in form of various blogging related services.

 

These were some ways to make money from a blog. There are many other ways of making money from a blog and many other new monetization options for blogs are introduced timely. Below are some tips that will help you make money with comfort.

 

Simple tips for making money for your blog

#1. Monetization of a blog is later part and first the focus should be entirely on building reputation and readership

 

#2. Traffic from search engines is a crucial element of blog monetization, bloggers must understand this and learn at least the basics of SEO.

 

#3. Though many monetization options exists but bloggers must consider few of the very carefully. The code provided by ad networks for displaying ads may load large JavaScript files , images and such media thus affecting the performance of your blog pages. Bloggers can use tools like GTMetrix before and after placing ad code and check the difference in performance.

 

#4. The location of placing ads can affect the revenue largely. Bloggers must use few ads at key places like below the title etc., this will help them earn more from less ads.

A Blogger is generally a kind of internet addict, the idea behind having a blog might be different for individual bloggers but bloggers it is anticipated that bloggers know more about internet than other users. Many people who do not operated a blog might also be interested in knowing about terms related to blogging and internet. Here is a list of terms related to blogging , internet and technology.

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Ajax - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique used to make websites dynamic
Alexa Rank - A rank in the website ranking system by Alexa Internet – most preferred website ranking system
Anonoblog – A blog operated anonymously
Apache - Apache is a web server software to serve web pages from a web server
Atom - Atom is a content syndication format
Back-links - Links to a web page found on other web pages
Black Hat SEO - Negative Search Engine Optimization techniques
Blammer- A person responsible for spamming blogs
Blargon – Blogging Glossary
Blaudience – Blod readers
Blawg - A blog dedicated to law
Bleg - A blog post requesting information or input
Blego - Blog+Ego Measuring blogger worth
Blog Carnival – Links to other blog post about some topics
Blog Day – A day you find new blogs
Blog hopping – Switching from one blog to other
Blog of Note – A known blog recommended by readers
Blog Tipping – Complimenting a blog
Blogathon – Updating blog with extremely high frequency
Blogathy – Not posting on a day
Blogger bash - A blogger party
Bloggerel – The same opinion posted repeatedly on a blog
Bloggies - A known bloggers award
Bloggies- Annual blogging awards
Blogging Platform Blog publishing platform
Blogiday- Holiday from blogging
Blogiversary – Birthday of your blog
Blogiverse – Blogging universe something relevant to Blogosphere
Blogoholic - Addicted to blogging
Blogophobia – Fear of blogs and blogging
Blogopotamus – Extremely long blog post
Blogorific - Terrific blogging
Blogorrhea – Extremely high blogger output
Blogosphere – Group of blogs/bloggers existing in some specific area or category
Blogroach - A commenter who rudely disagrees with posted content
Blogsit – Maintaining a blog for some period in absence of blog owner
Blogsite - A web site that combines blog feeds from a number of different sources
Blogsnob – Denying to respond to a blog comment
Blogstorm – Suddent increase and huge amount of blogging activity due to some reason
Blogvertising – Advertising on blogs
Blogware – Software for blogging
Blook – A book created from blog posts
Blurker – A reader who does not post comment
BOBs – A bloggers award
C-Panel – An utility to manage various aspect of hosting a website
CAPTCHA - Span protection utility
Category – A category of publishing post
CC – Creative Commons is a type of license under which free to use content is provided
Celeblog – A blog talking a bout a celebrity
Celebriblog – A blog by a celebrity
CMS – Content management system used for creation of blogs and websites
Comment Spam – Posting irrelevant and links as comments repeatedly on many blogs
Comment – A reply to a blog post
Content Keyword – Most important word repeatedly used or found in content
Content Syndication – Making content available of various websites
Content – Article pictures videos and other media generally posted on a blog
Contextual Ads – Ads that are closely associated with the content on a page
CPC – Cos per click a blog monetization model
CSS – Cascaded Style Sheets are used to style WebPages
Dark Blog- A private blog
DNS – Domain Name Server keeps the record of a domain and its various aspects
Domain – A Website identity/location on internet e g Facebook com Google com
Doppelblogger – Plagiarizing wrongly copying content of other blogs
Draft Post – A post which is yet to be published
Edu-blog – Blog about education
EFF - Electronic Frontier Foundation a group working to protect bloggers interest
Feed Aggregator – Tools that fetch feeds from various sources and put them at one place
Feed Reader – Utilities used to reader feed from a source
FeedBurner – A know utility to offer feed subscription
GAD – A habit of unnecessarily checking Google AdSense earning repeatedly
Google Analytic – A service by Google which offers analysis of various aspects of visitors to a website
Google Authorship – Establishing connection between a blog/blog post and its author profile on Google Plus
Google Honeymoon – A period when new sites receive high traffic from Google search
Google Publisher Ship –Establishing connection between a Google Plus Page and a website
Google SandBox The period when Google Search puts new websites away from displaying in search results till their legitimacy is proved
Hat Tip- Acknowledgement of source for a news
Hitnosis – Refreshing browser repeatedly to find response to a blog/ blog post
Hosting – Maintaining a website on a webserver
HTML – Hyper Text Mark-up Language is the key language used to create webopages
HTTP – Hyper Text Transfer protocol is the protocol on a web server that is used to serve web pages and content
HTTPS - Hyper Text Transfer protocol secure is the protocol on a web server that is used to serve web pages and content securely
IP – Internet protocol is generally the numeric address of a web server or a location on the web
JavaScript – A client side scripting language which is used to make WebPages interactive
Keyword Density – The volume of important words in some content
Keyword Research – Research to find a keyword or various aspects about a keyword generally related to Search Engine optimization
Keyword Stuffing – Unnecessarily using irrelevant keyword in an attempt to fool search engines
Kittyblogger – writing about cats
Label – Similar to category a keyword or phrase to categorize a blog post
Linguablog – A blog writing about languages and translation
Linkbaiting - Writing content just with an anticipation of getting back links
Metablog – A blog publishing about blogging
Milblog – A blog abour=t military or armed forces
Moblog – a blog crated to be viewed on a mobile device
Mommy Blog – A blog primarily talking about home and household things
Monetizing – Making money from a website or blog
Movlogs – A blog that offers videos to be viewed from a mobile device
Multiblog – Maintaining multiple blogs
Open Graph – A mark-up generally used by Facebook
Organic Traffic – Traffic that comes from search engine without paid advertising
Page Rank – A Ranking system by Google Search that evaluates the reputation of a web page on the web on a scale from 1 to 10 where higher is better
Permalink – A hyperlink to a webpage
Photocast- An automatically updated photo blog
Ping – A way to notify various services about a new blog post
Podcasting – Podcasting is offering rich media like videos photos audio and other image files
Post Slug – Slug is search engine friendly terms used in an URL of a post
Post – A blog post
Pro Blogger –An experienced expert and known blogger
Reciprocal Links – Offering links in anticipation of links
RSS – Rich site Summary or Real simple Syndication is a feed format
SEF – Search Engine Friendly
SEM – Search Engine Marketing is are techniques used to promote something in web search results
SEO – Search engine optimization are techniques to make web pages compatible with search engine crawlers generally
Shocklog – Provoking discussion by publishing such content
Sitemap – A map of various section and web pages on a website created for users and search engine crawlers
Slashdot Effect – Getting huge temporary traffic after publishing a post link on Slashdot m Digg or such sites
SMM –Social media marketing are techniques to promote something using social media sites
Social Sharing – Sharing links and content on social media websites
Social Signals – The volume or response for a link shared on social media sites
Splog- A spam blog
Spomments- Spam comments
Tech blog – A blog publishing about technical topics
Technorati- A known blog search engines
Track Back – Offering links and notifying other blogs similarly receiving notification from other blogs
Vlog – Video blog
Warblog – A blog writing about war
Web mastering – Maintaining various aspect and tasks related to operating a website or blog
Web Property – A website or blog
Weblog – Original name of a blog
Webmaster Tools – A service offered by Google to take care of various search related aspects of a website
Website Traffic – visitors to a website
WYSIWYG – What You See Is What you Get is type of editors that allows user to create and publish web content without needing or using any mark-up
XFN – XHTML Friends Network Is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks

 

A sincere request

I have created this post just to ensure that internet users and enthusiasts have a place to known about few important terms related to blogging, technology and internet. This post was written in a short time and may lack many important terms. I request readers to contribute such terms in comments and make this post more useful.

“Composing a blog post is the most important aspect of blogging.”, This was the answer by me when some ne asked about the most important part of blogging. Many bloggers do not realize this and commit the biggest mistake. To explain this further I can give one example . Just imagine that you find two chocolate stores in your nearby market. Store is always full of people and Store 2 has few regular customers checking in and out. Store 2 is more successful and the reason is that store 2 has few people coming in but they are real customers and store 1 more visitors and less customers. When you try to research further you find that store 1 has variety of chocolates and always introduces new varieties but the varieties offered by store 1 are not popular in your market, on the other side store two has regular variety of chocolates that are popular and has regular buyers.
What we can learn from above example is that a blogger must always try to focus on few things ;
#1. Whom they are writing for ?
#2. What are they writing ?
#3. Why readers will like that ?
Above mentioned tips apply to bloggers seriously trying to build readership but every blogger will not have such a goal. However , there are many other things that a bloggers must know for composing better blog posts.

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Blog post idea

The idea behind a blog post is really important. This applies irrespective of the goal behind blogging. A blogger has to be very clear about the idea behind their blog post. A blogger can not just write anything.

Series of blog posts

This blog post is part of the better blogger series. Offering blog post being a part of series can really add to the reputation of a blog. This will increase the time readers spend on a blog and make it easy for a blogger to elaborate on a broad topic by dividing it in smaller posts.

Blog post title

The title of a blog blog post is important from the perspective of SEO and readers too. The SEO aspect is covered in a point below but from the readers perspective, a blogger has to ensure things mentioned below,

#1. Post title should be most relevant to its content.
#2. Post Title should be appealing for most of your readers and other people who may see  it.

Writing a blog post

Writing a blog post in general is about a style that the bloggers have of their own but a good idea is to script few very important points of your blog post and after that those points can be further elaborated.

Editing blog posts

Editing blog posts involves making it proper for readers and search engines too. The search engine part is discussed below but for readers, avoiding grammatical errors is very important. Bloggers can use blog post editors to write blog posts rather that using word processing utilities like MS Word or Open Office etc. Blog post editors are very advanced nowadays and are generally "WYSIWYG” ( What you see is what you get ) editors. All leading blog platforms have such editors. Bloggers have to ensure that grammatical error detection is turned on.
Time is becoming very important and it keeps the same importance to your readers too. A blogger has to ensure that optimum information is provided in minimum words. Generally a post of 500 words is sufficient but can have more words if the topic demands.
A blog post must also use , images , videos , tables etc. wherever applicable. Blog post editors have these features inbuilt. Bloggers must also avoid using iframes , nested tables and flash if not explicitly needed.

Using videos, images and other media

Videos and images make a blog post appealing and adds to its utility. It is recommended that videos and images are hosted on a content delivery network or services using such infrastructure. Leading videos and image hosting services like YouTube, Picassa and Flickr etc. use advanced and highly capable infrastructure that ensures prompt loading of the content.
Images and videos can be embedded in your posts. While doing this bloggers must ensure that they use proper ALT tag for the content.
While using content like videos or photos or any such , blogger must use valid sources. Blogger must not copy content straightaway . There are many sources on the internet that offer reusable content for free license or licenses like CC . Attribution is also very important. Post linked below will help in this.

Ways to find free photos for modification and reuse.

SEO while composing blog post

SEO while composing a blog post is a broad topic however we will be dealing with it in short here. Here are few tips for better SEO while composing blog posts.
#1. Use most relevant  keywords in title.
#2. Limit the title to 75 characters.
#3. Use H1 To H6 tags to highlight the important points in your post.
#4. Distribute content in paragraphs.
#5. Use CLEAR property for images wherever needed.
#6. Use ALT attributes to images.
#7. Use NOFOLLOW attribute to  links wherever needed.
#8. Use few but most relevant categories and tags.
#9. Use meta search description , it is possible in many leading platforms.
#10. Use custom URL that includes important keywords and describes the post in least possible words.
#11. Use plugging and extensions for increasing SEO while composing post. Such plug-ins are available for WordPress and many leading platforms.
#12. Use most important keyword while starting the post or a paragraph in the post.

Associating post with your  blog and other posts

While writing blogs post associating them with existing post on your blog/s is recommended.

Making blog posts interactive

A blogger should develop interactive style of writing. This styles will make readers offer more comments will will give more ides for writing. This will help bloggers make readers visit regularly to their blogs.

In year 2012 , I wrote a lot about SEO and other related topics. Throughout 2012 I always felt that the meaning of SEO is changing rapidly. Finally I could only figure out that SEO is no more about doing all the hard work to make your web pages rank higher for some keywords or topics but about making your blog and web pages more and more compatible with search engines. I can surely say that search engines are not going to be a reliable source of traffic for your blogs. Even though you have done all the work to be better for the search engines but still there are going to be many bloggers who are doing the same. Year 2013 will be challenging for bloggers from the perspective of building readership. Let us just find out a better approach for building readership in 2013.

 

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How to build readership for blogs in 2013 ?

 

Lets us try to figure out a better approach for increasing the number of readers for a blog. This process will involve 3 tasks as mentioned below. However there will be many other sub tasks that will be part of this entire exercise e.g. making your blog perform better and load faster is a part of building readership because no one will be interested in waiting , whatever good the content be. We will not be discussing about all these sub points here. Readers can search thins blog to find out related articles.

 

#1. Strengthening the idea behind a blog.

Have your ever asked this question to yourself that what number of people will be interested in reading something that you are writing, why they will be interested in doing so and how are you going to let the know that you have something that they are looking for ? A blogger who can successfully answer these questions can make it to success.

 

The thought behind your blog is important and before writing anything or setting up a new blog one must carefully think about the content and the readers that will receive this. I personally recommend that you must write about topics that will be able to fetch attention of readers. Topics that are associated with there routine activities are going to be worth considering because topics that will just help readers to build knowledge will not be able to fetch their attention.

 

#2. Strengthening the content aspect of a blog.

This is most important yet most ignored aspect of blogging. Bloggers must realize that if they can write about something that is not commonly available but highly sought, they have there readers waiting for it. A single post may go viral and add to the number of your readers.

Before considering any success , bloggers must think seriously about increasing the quality and usability of their content.

 

#3. Building readership.

Commenting, social media sites blogger communities are all ways  to find readers for your blog. There are hundreds of ways a blogger can find people to covert them to readers but not every way should be used. Find one or two suitable ways to make people know about your blog and its idea. Offer all common subscription options like Feed , Facebook , Twitter and Google Plus.

Every effort has some goal and in this case bloggers must have some set goal of achieving number of readers like 500, 1000 etc. These readers will be earned by you and as you go on they will visit back to your blog , comment and share your posts. All this will add to the reputation of your blog and you will find the search engines also sending visitors to your blog.

This is my first post of 2013. I take this opportunity to wish a prosperous and full of knowledge year 2013 to be for all our readers. I also wish all the blogging success to all co bloggers in the global blogosphere but I truly believe that successful blogging in 2013 will not be very easy. I remember the time when I had started writing somewhere around year 2010, things have changed to great extent. It is not very easy to take a blog to larger audience very easily. Increasing number of bloggers and tough search engine advancement make it difficult for bloggers to build readership for their blogs. On the other side blogging in 2013 will be rewarding in terms of monetization prospect and increasing number of potential internet users who can be converted as regular blog readers. Many nations with big populations are becoming internet friendly. India is one of the best examples. Social media sites are also big players in your blogging success in 2013. We have some important points to know, that will help you achieve the blogging success that you desire.

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Tips for better blogging in 2013

#1. Search engines mind their users and you must mind your users not the search engines.

#2. Select your blogging topics wisely , the likes and needs of readers are always changing. A bloggers who can move along with changing times is always popular.

#3. Be creative while researching blog posts and do always try to create something new rather than copying completely , partially or even someone’s idea. You will find it difficult initially but later you will master the art of creating.

#4. One most important thing is that readers associate with some thought and not blogs. You blog must orient around some thought that readers will like to be associated with and you end up creating readership. Just like your friends and family associate with you on Facebook or other social media website, similarly readers associate with your blog for some cause. You must have a defined cause and let people clearly understand that why they must keep up with your blog.

#5. SEO is a complex topic but understanding that search engines need to show quality result for a search query and having that quality of content is the best SEO.

#6.  Hundreds of social media sites exist in 2013 , you can not use all of them but select few of them which best suit you.

#7.  You must have a planned strategy to promote your blog in 2013.

#8. The days of 2 to 3 posts a month are over, you should write regularly and also at regular interval.

#9. There are many ways of better blogging, you can not keep on experimenting but have some solid idea which includes few ways to build a successful blog. I have seen many bloggers wasting a lot of time experimenting, experimenting is a part of learning and you can keep some time for it.

#10. Be interactive, I have seen people commenting on hundreds of blogs just with an anticipation of getting visitors , however I have not seen any of them becoming successful. Commenting is the best way to build a close readers group that includes bloggers like you and who visit regularly to your blog.

There will be a lot that I will learn and also share with you in 2013.