A money making blog was the last thing the original lot of bloggers were thinking about. Of course, many of them did go on to make a lot of money from their blogs. Many got job offers and moved into main stream journalism while others were given book deals and went on to become minor celebrities. As Web 2.0 becomes more and more important in gaining traffic, the blogging platform is now the choice of most internet marketers as they try to make money online.

The experts tell us that to build a money making blog today means becoming the authority within a niche that is short of competition yet full of people hungry for information yet with new blogs appearing at the rate of several hundred per minute, 24 hours a day, finding that niche is becoming harder and harder. Your option here is to skip this part by finding a product yet to be released and establish yourself as the authority blog long before the general public become of aware of it. Internet marketers go for subjects that are being searched for right now, not next year so you can get the jump on them by keeping your ears open within an industry you are interested in.

An example might be a Harley fan who hears on a biker forum that Harley will be launching a new bike in 2010. Sniff around, send them emails, monitor the trade sites, find out if its true, find the name, by the domain, do a post once a week for 6 months. Once everyone else finds out and starts searching, you already have page rank, incoming links etc. You are the authority and so Google sends everyone to you.

If you are going to try and break into an already busy niche I would suggest that just as important as the competition is your passion and knowledge on the subject. Quality has a habit of rising to the top and speaking from experience, I find my best performing blogs that are in congested niches are the ones that invoke my passion and that I have a good understanding about the subject. This becomes even more important as search engines such as Google are learning to recognize quality rather than relying on keyword analysis. Things like commenting and other web 2.0 activities such as bookmarking are all seen as votes for your blog and people interact only when they find a blog of quality.

Having said that, you would of course be mad not to at least check out your competition before devoting time and effort into starting a money making blog within a particular niche, just don't get too hung up on it that's all. It is unlikely you will ever make money on the scale of an authority blog like say a Techcrunch but its quite reasonable for a blog with around a 1000 visitors a day to be making $10+ a day via Adsense and more with the occasional affiliate sale.

A few dollars a day isn't going to make anyone rich but as your blog grows and ages, so will its income. Running several of these types of money making blog can soon add up to a tidy yearly income and there is always the chance that one of your blogs will become a major player and really take off. Building an authority blog is not a fly by night scheme where you make a quick couple of bucks and then move on to your next domain name. An authority blog will take time but as both it and your reputation grows, so will the income it generates.

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