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How To Spend Your Vacation Blogging
Tuesday, June 09th, 2009 | Author: Beamer
  1. Step 1

    Hit the time clock at your job and head home. Your 9 Day Vacation/Blog-a-thon starts NOW!

    Stop at the grocery store on your way home and pick up the following essentials:
    Bread, Peanut Butter, Jelly, Chips, Coffee, Cream and Sugar, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Cigarettes, Microwave Popcorn, Water, Toilet Paper, and Dog Treats. Make sure you get enough of everything to last you a week or 9 days, depending on how many vacation days you managed to finagle. Don’t waste your money steaks or salmon or anything you have to cook. You won’t make the time for it and you’ll just have to throw it away when it outdates. Trust me on this. My dumpster has seen more real food than I have this week.

  2. Step 2

    As soon as you get home, take the dog out. It will probably be the last time you two see daylight. Make it an extra long walk this time so you won’t feel guilty later on when he’s lying at your feet, almost comatose from kidney failure.

  3. Step 3

    Make you first of many pots of coffee, empty the ashtray, pull up a chair and start blogging! You have 3 blogs to work, 2 blogs to start and you haven’t submitted anything to eHow or any other site yet. This is going to be a busy week!

  4. Step 4

    Don’t go to bed! If you do, you’ll just sleep later than you wanted and any time spent away from your blogs is time down the drain! You can occasionally nod off at your computer, but this is why I said to buy enough coffee to get you through 9 days!

  5. Step 5

    Run to the c-store for more cigarettes. You didn’t get enough, did you? I warned you! And don’t go to the grocery store to get them. You’ll waste too much time in line and you’ll just be tempted to buy something you’ll have to cook. If you need more food, get it at the C-store with your cigarettes. And if you really feel you need something that’s been cooked, they have hot dogs! Get one for your dog, too.

  6. Step 6

    Take your dog for a 10 minute walk twice a day. It doesn’t matter what time. I take my dog out at about 4 PM and again at 8 PM. Any more than that and he starts to think I owe it to him. Give him a cookie, scratch his ears and get back to work. 20 minutes of walking is enough for any human!

  7. Step 7

    On Day 9 of your Vacation/Blog-a-thon, do everything you had been putting of until vacation. Do the laundry, put all your coffee cups in the dishwasher, run the vacuum, throw away the newspapers you never read, pay your bills, take you dog for a good, long walk, sit in the sun for awhile with a good book….yeah, riiiiiight…who am I kidding! Don’t waste time doing ANY of that stuff! You have a whole day of blogging left! Get to it!

Tips & Warnings
  • Day One through Eight – Keep the coffee pot full! This is actually the way I tell time and keep to a schedule. It takes me approximately 2 hours – give or take – to go through a pot of coffee. You want to have your coffee pot as close to your work area as possible so you can avoid any unnecessary movement and so you can see it at all times. When I look up and the pot is empty, that means it’s time to move onto my next task – either the next blog or the next article, or the next Tweet, whatever.
  • Each time you make a new pot of coffee, hit the bathroom! That way you don’t have to get up as often. Also, empty the ashtray, make sure you have cigarettes, scratch your dog behind the ears and give him a cookie, check the printer paper, and make sure there are chips or cookies handy.
  • By the time all that is done, the next pot of coffee should be ready. Fill your cup and sit back down. You’re on a roll with your new blog and you don’t have time to take the dog out right now!
  • On Days 3 and 6, take a shower. It will wake you up and your dog will thank you for it. Don’t worry about shaving or makeup. No one else is going to see you because you’ll be facing your computer all week.
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How To Choose A Profitable Niche For Your Blog
Tuesday, June 09th, 2009 | Author: Beamer

OK, let’s get down to business here.  I’ve told you why Niche Blogging, now it’s time to start on the HOW of Niche Blogging.

By now you’ve probably got all kinds of blog ideas running through your mind.  And that’s good!  Every idea is a good idea.  Don’t let anyone tell you any differently.  Even if there are already thousands of blogs out there on “Staying Sane While Your Kid Learns To Play The Tuba”,  if your blog is well written, full of lots of good information and you market it right, it could be the one at the top of the list when someone Googles “Tuba Trouble”!

Here are some things to consider when choosing your topic for your niche blog:

  • Is it a topic you’re interested in?
    • Something to think about – while your blog may start producing a small amount of income in a month or so, most successful blogs take a year or two to start producing regularly.  Is this a topic that you could write a lot about, for a long time?
  • Is the topic popular?
    • While you may be interested in Tuba Playing Children, how many others out there are?  If no one is interested in the topic you choose, you won’t get a lot of visitors.  No visitors = No sales.  Think about the topics that you search for on the web.  Or look at the TV news or the newspapers to see what people are discussing right now.
  • Is there a lot of competition?
    • If you think you’ve found a hot topic or niche, then chances are someone else has had the exact same idea.  If there’s too much competition, you may never be seen.  If you have the time and energy to devote to making your blog stand out from the crowd, then go for it.
    • And don’t let someone talk you out of this one, girls!  If you want to do a blog about knitting, then do it!  There are ways to successfully market your blog and shoot it to the top.  And even though there may be thousands of blogs on knitting, there are BILLIONS of people in the world looking for knitting advice.  You only need SOME of them to find you.  And if it’s something you feel passionate about, then knitting it is!
  • Can you provide something that your competition is NOT?
    • Look at some of those other knitting blogs out there and see what they’re missing.  YOU knit.  So you know what to look for.  Maybe they don’t show enough pictures of stitches.  Maybe their patterns are always missing a step.  Maybe they’re just plain boring and you think you could make yours a lot more attractive or entertaining.
    • Do you create your own patterns?  You could offer them to your visitors.  Do you have a sense of humor?  You could include daily “Purls of Wisdom”.
  • Can you make money with this topic?
    • Look at those other knitting blogs.  Do they have ads on them anywhere?  Is there a related product that you could sell?  Maybe you could sell those patterns you’ve created.
    • We’ll get into this later because it’s a whole category by itself, but there are Affiliate programs out there that want you to place ads on your blog.  Some of them sell eBooks on knitting!  (I haven’t looked to see if there are any eBooks on Teaching Your Child To Play The Tuba.)

To help you narrow your final choice down even further, think about what types of sites you go looking for.  What are you usually searching for on the web?  Is there one particular topic that you get excited about, that you just can’t stop talking about?  Is there one topic that your family and friends come to you for advice about?

In my next post, I’ll give you a couple of tools to help you make that final decision.

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Why Is Niche Blogging Such A Popular Way Of Earning Money Online?
Tuesday, June 09th, 2009 | Author: Beamer

Niche Blogging is a great way to earn money on line for a number of reasons:

* You can write about topics that you already know about

* You can blog anytime – day or night

* Writing a post takes just a few minutes

* Once your blog is up, it requires very little maintenance

* Niche Blogs earn Passive Income

Don’t get me wrong, now. Niche Blogging takes a lot of work. You have to be committed and it takes awhile to see results. But once you DO start seeing those results, it has a snowball effect.

A lot of people start out in Niche Blogging thinking they’re going to do it faster and better than anyone else and they’re going to get rich RIGHT NOW! If that’s what you’re thinking, then I wish you well.

Amy Bass, creator of The Niche Blogger Membership Site, worked on her Niche Blogs for a year, steadily growing her content and her traffic. She’s a stay at home mom with 4 kids, so you know she had to work on her blogs while juggling housework, laundry, cooking, and play dates. She spent a lot of nights at the computer while everyone else slept. She did a lot of her blogging with a baby on her lap. In fact, in her instructional videos for The Niche Blogger Program, you can hear her children in the background!

But she had a goal – she wanted her family to be debt free within 2 years. She was committed to her plan and she was driven to succeed. And you have to be, too.

At the end of her first year of blogging, Amy was making $5,000.00 a month!

Darren Rowse, author of “ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, started on his path to successful niche blogging in November of 2002. While working at 3 other jobs!

Again, Darren had a goal – he wanted to be a full-time blogger. And he was also driven to succeed. Who wouldn’t rather work their own schedule, from home, than go out and set up circuses! (He hasn’t explained that one yet!)

At the end of 3 1/2 years of blogging through the night, blogging on his days off, and probably blogging in his sleep!, Darren was able to quit all of his other jobs and become a Full-Time Blogger because he was making over $100,000.00 a year from it! His highly successful AND educational blog about blogging can be found at ProBlogger.net.

My point is, if you are committed to your goal of earning money on line, and if you are driven to succeed, Niche Blogging is the best way to go.

You can set up a blog with 50 or 60 posts, put some ads on it, then just leave it alone and let it work for you. Niche blogs are like little 24/7 salesman, they’re always out there working, even when you’re NOT. Sure, you go check up on them occasionally, add a few posts here and there, but you don’t have to be there 8 or 9 hours a day 5 or 6 days a week. Once your blog is up, it stays up and continues to earn you passive income whether you’re there or not.

Amy and Darren, and most other successful bloggers, have more than one blog running. Sometimes twenty, or fifty or more. And yes, the more blogs you have up, the more time you’re going to spend at it. But there are still only 24 hours a day, and you’ll still only be working a percentage of those hours.

But YOU determine how many hours a day you work and what days you work. If you want to take a month off, do it! Your little blog is still out there working away, earning you passive income. If you want to use your time to create another blog, do it! That other blog is still out there earning you money!

Written by Beamer. Visit her blog, dedicated to helping beginning women bloggers at http://Paid2Blogg.com

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What Is Passive Income And How Can I Get Some
Tuesday, June 09th, 2009 | Author: Beamer

Passive income is:

Repeated, regular income, generated by a business that does not require direct involvement from the owner or merchant. Wikipedia.

Take books for example.

The author of a book works for months or sometimes years getting that book written. They may work an hour a day or 8 hours a day. They may take months off in between chapters and go lie on a beach somewhere.

But they’re not earning any money while they write the book. They only begin earning once the book is published and starts selling. After the book is published, though, they are done with it. They can go play on the beach forever now if they want to. Because the book continues to sell. And every time it sells, the author gets a residual check, a sales commission so to speak. That is passive income. Repeat, regular income generated from the original effort of writing the book.

Another example is song writing.

The writer of the song toils away at his little piano, scratching out a new song for say, Britney Spears. (Sorry for the bad example. I just saw something about her on Yahoo so now she’s the only singer who comes to mind.)

But this writer may spend a few hours or a few days, at this task. While he’s writing the song, he’s earning nothing from it. He’s only hoping it will sell. He’s giving it his best effort because he WANTS it to sell. He has committed to his family that he will put dinner on the table and a roof over their heads. And he is driven to succeed because he loves his family and doesn’t want his wife bashing him over the head with her frying pan!

Once Britney records his song and it starts selling, our writer begins to earn money. Now he can feed his family. And years from now, when some die-hard Britney Spears fan buys that song, he’ll still be earning Passive Income from that sale, too.

Passive Income in blogging and internet marketing works the same way.

You spend hours or days or months setting up a blog or marketing website but you don’t earn any money from it until you sell something.

Most blogs that you see have some type of advertising on them. Look over to the right on this page. You’ll see some ads I have that Google runs. And up at the top of the page you’ll see an ad for HostGator. Every time someone clicks on one of those ads and buys the product, I make money. Even if I’m not sitting here, at my desk, watching this blog. If I were to leave town today, and not come back for a year, I would still earn money every time someone clicks that HostGator ad and signs up for their Hosting plan.

That is the beauty of Passive Income and Blogging!

Written by Beamer. Visit her blog, dedicated to helping beginning women bloggers at http://Paid2Blogg.com

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What Is The Difference Between A Blog And A Website
Tuesday, June 09th, 2009 | Author: Beamer

So just what exactly IS a blog?

Very basically – a Blog is a particular type of website. That’s it in a nutshell. But a website is not always a Blog.

eBay is a website. blog.ezinearticles.com is a blog. When you look up car insurance on the internet, you’re going to a website. When you’re reading the ProBlogger.net site, you’re reading a blog.

A website, generally, presents information. It may have lots of pages of content, and you may be able to buy something, but they’re not actually communicating with you. They’ve just put a bunch of information on a page to sell you something.

When blogging first came about on the internet, it was a way for people to communicate with friends and family members. They would post holiday pictures and tell about their jobs and vacations.

So blogs are a more personal way of communicating. And they usually allow, in fact they invite, some type of interaction. For example, the comment section. And some bloggers like to include polls in their blogs, either for entertainment or to gauge their visitors’ reactions to a post.

Bloggers want you to leave a comment. That way they know you’ve been there and they know they influenced you enough for you to speak your mind about the topic. And then the next visitor will chime in and eventually, you have a whole group conversation going on.

Blogs are a lot more personal, too, than a website. When you go to Geico.com, sure, you’re going to be greeted by that cute little talking gecko. But he doesn’t really care that he’s talking to you. He’s just spouting marketing information. He doesn’t even really know that you’re sitting there.

But when you visit a blog, it’s like going to someone’s home. I may not be able to see you, but I care whether you’re comfortable and at ease. And I hope you DO talk to me and let me talk to you!

Blogs also usually have a lot more content, or articles, than a website. A website is a one shot deal. You put it up and forget about it. But a good blog is constantly growing, with new material, or posts, being added on a regular basis to keep your visitors interested and coming back for more.

Think about it – If you went to visit Mrs. Smith, next door, how long would you stay and how often would you return if all she said was, “Hello, welcome to my home” and then she just sat there?

Here are some more Blog vs. Website examples:

Websites

* HostGator.com
* Target.com
* The Shell Factory.com

Blogs

* Stumble Rumba.com
* Blogging Guy.com
* Waiter Rant.com

In my next post, I’ll explain about some of the different types of blogs and how people use them to make money.

Written by Beamer. Visit her blog, dedicated to helping beginning women bloggers at http://Paid2Blogg.com

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