Today it’s common place for people to know a blogger however it’s not so common to know a work from home blogger who actually makes money blogging.

Blogging in and of itself is really easy today. If you have something you want to share blogging is the way to do it and it doesn’t have to cost you a cent.

However, after saying blogging is easy and free, I have to add that if your goal is to blog for profit you will need to work at it. I’m giving you good advice when I say that the first step in blogging for profit is research.

I Look At Blogging Like Vegetable Gardening

My first experience at gardening was kind of a flop and I didn’t actually have any plants that produced produce. Thank goodness I had a job and didn’t actually need the produce to live. Had I been blogging for profit back then I would have starved.

Later I learned a few things about gardening in general which helped with the following growing season. Using vegetable gardening as an analogy of blogging for profit what did I learn that could equate to a work from home blog that will make money?

A Vegetable Garden’s Location Is Like Your Niche

The first step in good vegetable gardening, just like in real estate, is location, location, location.

In keeping with our analogy of veggie gardening location means where you get the most direct sunlight. For blogging for profit this means you need to be located in a niche you can get enough traffic to make money.

This also means that your traffic or the sunlight is direct and not bouncing off things before it arrives at your garden, or blog. This means you need targeted traffic for best results.

You Need To Have Fertile Soil Full of Nutrients

So sunlight or a profitable niche is required but it’s not the only thing one needs to succeed in gardening or blogging.

Before you ever plant the seed, or start that first blog post you need to be sure you have all the things required for growing your garden in place before you trying growing things or earning income from your blog.

Planting Seeds As Blog Posts

Once you have cultivate and amended the soil so that it has a good foundation for growing a garden or a business you need to have the right seeds which in this analogy are your words of choice, or niche related keyword phrase.

Water Your Garden Regularly For Best Results

So, all the things you have done to this point have been a foundation or garden preparation. Next, for best results the garden needs to be watered regularly. The thing is too little and you don’t get the results you expect but too much and you can over do it.

In blogging it’s great to have natural links pointing back to your blog pages. However, just like in gardening, too little watering or backlinking and you won’t get the effect you want. Too much backlinking all at one time can appear unnatural to search engines and can have negative results.

I love gardening and I love working at home and blogging for profit. Both took me a while to learn how to get the best results, once I learned it was up to me to apply what I learned and that’s when the magic happens.

As a work from home marketer I started my business with static websites but once blogs came on the scene I gave blogging a try. I loved the idea of a blog and found it so easy to update which wasn’t the case with my static sites.

Before long I was converting my static sites into blog and the rest is history. I also found that search engines, like Google, love blogs, probably because they are updated so frequently. Just a couple of months I had better ranking than any of my non-blog sites.

Since then blogging has seen more and more attention and quickly grew into a great way to communicate with your visitors. I’m into affiliate marketing as a work from home marketer but not every one has a blog for profit.

Whatever your reason for blogging you can always benefit from a few blogging tips that will help you get more visitors. After all it’s a real pain to write content that no one sees, right. It’s kind of a blow to the ego and self esteem. Might as well get it right if you’re going to blog.

1. It’s All About The Blog Post Title

When people are using search engines to find what they are looking for they will be shown sites based on their search criteria in the search results page. It’s your blog post page title that is shown and needs to be keyword focused as well as catchy enough to attract the click.

I pass right over many sites listed in search results because the title doesn’t match my search criteria, even though they were listed. It’s so worth your time to come up with a title that will grab me by the eyes and make me click it.

Example: I am looking for some helpful tips about bass fishing and search Google for the phrase ‘bass fishing tips’. When I look at the listings I look for titles that match my search text. If the first site listed says ‘Bass Fishing Boat Tips’ I might just ignore it and move down the listing until I see something closer, such as, ‘The Bass Fishing Tips That Netted Me My First Trophy’.

If you can’t get people to click your listing you need to work on your blog post titles.

2. Add A Description And Tags

All my self hosted blogs are WordPress blogs. I like them because I can have so many great themes, a different one for every blog if I want. But I also focus on SEO by using my favourite plugin called All-In-One SEO.

I make sure I add a keyworded description and keywords. Next I add relevant tags under the tag section.

The combination of your keywords and tags make it easier for search engines to determine your real focus.

3. Use Headings To Break Up Text

As a work from home blogger I put in a lot of time reading and learning from other blogs. I, like so many others, tend to be in a hurry most of the time and I can’t stand looking at an entire page of text with no breaks.

I don’t care to read through too much fluff and want to get to the meat of the post or article. For this reason I like to see heading that not only break up a page of text but also indicate what’s in the following text.

Keyword your headings and you will find search engines love your blog even more. Add in our next tip and you have real power in your blogging.

4. A Picture Says A Thousand Words

That’s me on the right. I didn’t have time to comb my hair so please excuse me. Okay it’s a picture from our last Halloween. It was fun watching the expressions on kids faces when they saw this open the door.

Yes headings are important and great for quickly scanning an article or post for the info you need.

You can also add images to your post. An image can say a lot but using the ALT tag with images allows you to say more by adding a keyworded phrase, which the search engines can read.

A picture is also a great way to break up your post and adds value to your post as it can keep your reader reading longer. The longer you can keep your visitor on a page the more likely they are to click a link or banner ad and you make money.

5. Get Your Reader Involved In Your Post

I love it when my readers take an interest in my blog post and take the time to leave a blog comment. When I am writing blog posts I want to get my readers taking part so I try to word my content so that they will want to make a comment and get involved.

I also do my best to offer content my readers like enough to return in the future for more. As a work from home affiliate marketer this is part of how I make my living. If I can’t get return visitors it’s unlikely I will make money as people don’t usually buy on the first visit, sometimes not even until they have returned 5 or 6 times.

This is part of why it’s important to keep your niche focus and don’t go off topic much. I have left many blogs because they strayed too far from their niche and I lost interest.

Now it’s time for you to get involved in my blog which can result in visitors to your own blog.

What’s a blogging tip you can add that would help others be better bloggers?

If you have the desire to make your blog worthy enough to earn money you have to have a focus with your articles. Fresh unique content today isn’t an option, it’s a requirement. The reason being their are higher expectations from both search engines as well as your human visitors.

Each article you create and add to your blog has potential to earn money. For this reason you should be optimizing your webpage to the best of your ability. Perhaps you’ve let quality slide for quantity but it’s not too late to put a strong keyword focus to your articles. You can even return to existing articles and fix with proper SEO.

How To Come Up With Great Content

Write Down Your Ideas

I couldn’t begin to tell you how many times I have had a great idea, only to forget what it was by the time I could get it written down. Very annoying, until I started carrying a notepad and pen with me every where I go these days. I’m telling you that I can have an idea or leave the room to get something and forget what it was I was going to get.

I tend to get answers to questions I have or new ideas for content when my mind is most relaxed, so that usually when I’m not at the computer. Today I just pull out the ole notepad and quickly jot down the thoughts I can use later.

Keep Niche Related Magazines Handy For Scanning

You don’t have to be online to come up with new ideas and content. I always ask for niche magazines, like fishing, gardening or guitar magazines for my birthday and for Christmas. Then it’s great to just go sit in a park and read for a while. With or without my laptop.

What do I look for in magazines? The articles are great of course but I like checking out the ads as well because companies pay big bucks to have their ads in these magazines. This tells me they are most likely making money from these ads so I pay close attention to then to see what I can promote on my blogs. Why not let them do the research while you just capitalize on their work.

This doesn’t mean you copy their content as that would just be wrong. The magazines I read and scan for info gives me the ideas but I still need to rework those ideas to make them mine and so the content I create is unique.

Frequent Niche Forums

Forums within your niche can be full of useful information you can spin into your own unique content.

The thing with most good forums is the fact there is a lot of useful info floating around but it’s also important to know that forums can suck you in and you can find you spend way too much time there when you should be working your blog. This happened to me in my early years.

Those are just a few ways to gain ideas for quality unique content and should give you enough content to keep your readers happy and coming back for more. Just keep it informative and unique.

Google and other top search engines gobble blog content right up and will start listing your content higher in the search engine results pages and you’ll get more targeted traffic. A great incentive for creating better quality content wouldn’t you think.

This is what I do for a living. I have many blogs in a variety of niches so I need lots of content and backlinks so I use The Best Spinner to spin more great content I can publish around the Internet linking back to my important pages, making them even more popular in the eyes of the search engines.

Life isn’t over just because it’s time to retire or is it? For some it’s certainly looking bleak in todays economy.

My wife and I love to travel however it could become tough to travel once we retire if we didn’t have an extra stream of income coming from our online blogs.

As the two of us are hitting sixty on our next birthdays we are close to retirement. Actually I have already retired and work from home home as a blogger. My wife has to hang in there for just one more year and we are free to do as we please for the rest of our life.

It’s sad to see all the people who are hitting retirement without a plan for their future. They just live day to day and are fearing retirement because they don’t have any security. A few of our friends have even been out of work for some time with little hope to ever be employed again.

Blogging For Profit

I do have a plan in place. One where I work from home blogging about things I love to talk about and make money doing it. The plan is active and working right now. We both worked with computers for the past 25 years and have two computers at home.

Having a computer isn’t an uncommon thing today as most people have laptops in their homes. We just chose to make money with our computers through blogging about hobbies and interests. Currently I am the blogger but once my wife retires and we start traveling she will be blogging about our travels for my travel blog.

How To Get Started With Blogging For Profit

We learned about affiliate marketing from Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook so we knew what we were doing. Our blogs now include relevant links to a variety of affiliate products and services based on the blog niche and we make money.

What’s really cool about this is the fact that we don’t even own any of the products we promote. That’s affiliate marketing, using other people’s products to make money with our blogs.

As baby boomers we are plenty old enough to have acquired enough experiences to share with readers to keep them coming back for years. All we have to do is write articles for our blogs that are focused on specific words known as keywords to get the right traffic, add a few affiliate links and start making some extra money from those hobbies and interests.

Get started by first learning affiliate marketing from Rosalind Gardner’s Super Affiliate Handbook and I will see you online. Be sure to use the comments to ask any questions or to leave your comments.

So many people today work from home blogging, myself included. However, blogging today is no longer a new method for people to get together online for sharing experiences through stories and photos but I feel it’s about the best way for a work at home marketer to make money online. I understand they started as web logs for documenting programming progress, I prefer it as a blog.

I use my blogs to make money and have blogs in a variety of niches that I know enough about to blog for profit. During this process I use multiple methods to make my earnings. So I have listed a few ways I make money blogging today.

Adsense Advertising – Google is my best friend for so many reasons, mostly because they send me the traffic I need to make money so it’s only right that I make money with my blogs though Google’s Adsense program.

Now when visitors are reading my pages they will see relevant ads displayed by Adsense, if and when they click an ad I make a little more income. The more targeted visitors I get the more likely I am to increase my income.

Write Product Reviews – I love affiliate marketing as it just seems to go hand in hand with blogging. I find products that help my business or make me a better gardener or fisher, what ever it is I use affiliate products to make money money online by writing product reviews for my readers.

I earn commission for each product I sell from my reviews. Some commissions are tiny because sometimes products are rather inexpensive, like $2.00 fishing lures I only make 10 cents with. However there are things I sell, like horse saddles where I can make hundreds per sale.

Contextual Text Link Ads – I belong to a few text link ad sites and earn money having these services sell contextual links and ads on my pages. I just list my site, add info about my site and they match my site with advertisers and I earn money every month.

Paid Links – As my blogs started gaining ranking in the search engines I started getting emails with request for links within my blog posts. All they want is a hyperlink and are willing to pay me for that link a year at a time. How cool is that.

Sell Your Own Products – A product could be something as simple as an ebook or report that is useful to others. I have a friend that wrote a short ebook teaching others how to potty train their small dogs to use a litter box.

He sells his ebooks on the Clickbank marketplace and a few other spots like eJunkie and DayDotCom.

Not only can you sell your own ebooks you can have others sell your ebook as affiliates. This can make you a lot of extra money over and above what you earn yourself.

Welcome to my new Work From Home Moncton blog which I just registered today at GoDaddy.com.

Today I would like to talk about a few guidelines one can follow that will give them a much better chance at work at home blogging success today.

The world today is full of people hurting and hunting for some extra ways to make money, just to help make ends meet and I’m not talking about third world countries here. It’s happening everywhere, even Canada, United States, Asian countries and all over Europe.

Many of these people see the earning potential in starting a work from home blog, they just don’t know how to make it work. Unfortunately for many they jump in blind anyways and spend the next months struggling and frustrate as well as even more broke. Then the day comes when they have to make the tough decision, give up or learn how.

After many frustrating months I made the decision to learn how. Now, after a few years of making it work, I would like to share some guidelines you can follow to have similar success with work from home blogging.

Work From Home Blogging Requires WORK

I am sure you’ve noticed that the key phrase ‘work from home’ begins with the word WORK which should be an indication that it will take work to succeed. Not only does it take work it takes some research as well.

The best advice I can give when you hear this from gurus saying anything like: “It’s easy to work from home and make money online.”, all in the same sentence is to turn tail and run away as fast as you can. It takes know-how, work and dedication to be a successful blogger today.

I have a couple of friends that are far worse off today, $10,000 worse off actually, after listening to a self-proclaimed guru claiming quick riches and giving him their hard earned money. Wish they had talked to me first.

It doesn’t take a lot of money to get started, certainly not thousands of dollars, however it does take some know-how which can be learned and then some work from home work to make it pay off.

8 Things You NEED To Focus On For A Successful Work From Home Blog

1. Purchase a keyworded domain name.
2. Give your reader value in the content you share with them.
3. Don’t rehash old info, keep content original and your readers will stay longer.
4. Try providing info that’s helpful today as well as tomorrow.
5. Don’t write for search engines first, put your human readers first.
6. Try to be yourself, meaning don’t try to be someone else.
7. Never stretch the truth, unless you’re a fisherman.
8. Get your readers, real humans, involved in your discussions.

The top search engines will only show your webpage on their first page if your site earns it’s way to the top. The thing is there are many who get it right meaning if you don’t you won’t get those all important visitors you need to make money.

1. Own A Keyworded Domain: This was the #1 thing listed because today you really need a keyworded domain name for real success.

Start by researching your desired niche to find keywords you can earn money with. You need to realize that many niches have had people working them for years so it will take a bit of research to turn up those money keywords.

Note that these keywords may not get huge volumes of traffic but enough for you to make money with. This is how I make my blogs successful so I know that it can be done and that it works so don’t give up looking.

It is not only important, I believe it’s vital, to use your best keyword phrase when you purchase a domain for your business or blog. Successful marketers put research first because they know it the research that makes marketing online so lucrative.

An example is the domain you’re on right now. Work From Home Moncton. Like all the domains I purchase at GoDaddy.com this one is keyworded to my best keyword phrase because I have proven it works with my other domains.

I not only go after keyworded domains but I also go for DOT com only as my DOT com domains have always done better than non DOT com domains, even in the same niche.

2. Give Your Readers Value In Blog Posts They Deserve It. Why go to the bother of researching your niche if you don’t focus on what people in that niche want. So give your reader something of value to read and they will read it as well as return again and again, as long as the content has value to them.

3. Don’t Re-Hash Published Content. This means you don’t just regurgitate the same thing everyone else is saying, unless you can put a new and interesting spin on it. Make it uniquely your own.

4. Provide Ever Green Content. If you want your site to be viable for many years it needs to contain content that is viable year after year. People aren’t going to search for out dated information.

5. Write Your Content For Humans. I find it so frustrating when I land on a webpage, after doing a search only to find content that’s been spun until it doesn’t make sense to read. I tend to try and re-read parts but usually just leave frustrated and go back to the search results to find a better site.

Do your research, find your best keywords and then write articles that give readers what they want, not the search engines, they can take care of themselves if you just write quality as well as unique content.

6. Be Yourself. Another thing I have found when reading web pages is that people don’t seem to want to be themselves. Instead they feel the need to use big words and to sound more intelligent that I am. It sometimes hurts trying to read stuff like that.

Just be yourself and share valuable information, that’s what I like to read.

7. Tell The Truth, Always. When I read an article on a site and find even one piece of information I know is not accurate and it makes the entire article suspect. Why would I continue reading if I have doubts about your credibility? Be honest and stay honest.

8. Get Your Readers Involved. Now that you are doing all the things that make for a great work from home blog and you’re on your way. Now one more thing that’s important and that’s to get your readers involved in your discussion.

As you can see it’s not that difficult to work from home and make good money, once you know some guidelines like those I’ve mentioned here. I said ‘not difficult’ but it does take work so do the learning first and happy blogging.