Breaking Into Blogging

There are many great reasons to try to make a living as a blogger. Blogging is a creative outlet that simultaneously allows for self-expression and interaction with others. Additionally, blogging is a job that you can do from home (or anywhere else) so it can provide you with a lot of flexibility in your work once you get it off the ground. What many bloggers unfortunately don't realize at the start is that blogging is also hard work. It's not something that you're going to earn a whole lot of money at initially. But it is possible to make a living off of blogging if you're persistent in your efforts at becoming a blogger.

Here are the tips and steps that you need to follow to break into paid blogging work:

• Set up your own blog and put up high quality posts on a daily basis. The only way that you're going to get a good blog readership, a portfolio of blog work that will get you hired by businesses and a strong income from ad revenue is to establish a great blog. This means writing daily and making sure those are high quality posts.
• Start networking with bloggers. In addition to being your readership, other bloggers are a great resource for information about new blog revenue options and blogging jobs that are available. You want to start commenting on others' blogs and developing relationships with successful bloggers.
• Publish on a blog network like HubPages. These types of networks are better at getting you ad revenue that you can be on your own. HubPages is my favorite (here's why) but there are other similar sites including eHow and Triond. Be aware that it takes some time to start building revenue from these sites but it's worth it.
• Make sure you've done your affiliate work. You should be an Amazon Affiliate and you should be signed up with Google Adsense. Make sure you use these tools on your blog and that you sign them into your blog network accounts.
• Start looking for paid blogging work. The easiest way to make money in blogging is to get someone else to pay you to blog. You might initially work with revenue only sites but can then go on to get paid per post for your work. Check out freelance writing job links and announcements such as those provided at Freelance Writing Jobs, Problogger Job Board and Real Words (my own blog). When you apply, point to your own blog and your work on blog networks as a sort of online portfolio. The paying jobs will start to roll in slowly but surely.
• • Make sure that you keep networking. You need to continue promoting your work on social networking sites and to other bloggers. This skill is often a requirement of getting paid blogging work.

The real keys to getting good income from your blogging are persistence and quality. You must put out content on a regular basis through a range of different sites. And you must make sure that your quality of content is high enough that people are going to want to read what you have to say - and that they'll come back to read some more in the future. If you're committed to becoming a paid blogger, you should be able to find a way to do it.