Yes, you can make money blogging and I know people who do it. I even know how to do it myself! I'm going to share the secret of online success with you today, and also explain why I'm not taking advantage of it - because I think my experience will be useful to you , if you're thinking of earning a living online.

As most people know, the blog was originally invented as an online diary. Blogs are still the perfect tool if that's what you want to do - but that kind of blog won't make any money, unless you have an amazingly interesting and controversial life (or unless you're famous already).

In fact, you may be surprised to learn that even famous "diary" bloggers like Tila Tequila make almost no money from their blog. Their income comes from the spin-offs, like TV work or paid interviews. That's because the only way to earn money directly from a blog is from advertising.

If you have a "diary" blog like Tila's, people come to your site wanting to read about your exploits. They don't come looking to buy something, so they're not likely to click on the ads - in fact, they may not even notice them, because these days we all suffer from "ad blindness".

"Ad blindness" refers to the fact that we're all so familiar with ads, we no longer pay attention to them.

When internet advertising was invented, people didn't know the difference between content and ads, or they clicked on ads because they were a novelty. Any ad on any blog stood a chance of making an impulse sale. We all recognize ads now and mostly, ignore them. We'll only click on them if we've come to the site looking for that product.

When I started my own blog, I reckoned that even if only 1% of the 600 million people surfing the net read my blog, I could make money. Surely 1% wasn't too much to ask?

How naive I was! My blog was only one of over 70 million! The chance of anyone stumbling across it by accident was miniscule.

I learned that I had to get the search engines to love my blog. After all, how do you find sites when you're browsing on the internet? You find them using search engines like Google. If your blog is one of thousands on the same subject, it will be ranked on Google according to

• age
• freshness
• popularity.

So a new, unknown blog doesn't stand a chance - it'll be listed on page 20 if it's lucky!

I set about making my blog more attractive to Google.  I couldn't do much about "age", except have patience. "Freshness" was easy - that just meant adding a new post every day, and adding things like news feeds or RSS feeds that are constantly changing. I could also do something about "popularity" (i.e. how many other sites had a link to mine). I spent hours posting links on social bookmarking sites, writers’ forums (my blog was about writing), and submitting my blog to directories.

After all that, I still had only one or two visitors a day, and had earned only a few cents for all my efforts!

I discovered my main problem was something else entirely - my topic. If you pick a subject that hundreds of other people are already writing about, you're always going to be listed on the search pages behind hundreds of older, well-established sites on the same subject. I chose "getting published" as my topic - just try Googling that and see how many results you get! So no matter how hard I worked to improve my "search-worthiness", I was behind the 8 ball.

Choosing the right subject to make money from your blog is often referred to as "finding your niche". If you can find a brand new niche - one that no one else is blogging about - then you can make a fortune. For instance, the first "hooker's tell-all" blog was a sensation and led to fame and a book deal - but I bet you never heard much about the second, third and five-hundredth.

The longer the internet exists, the more ideas get used up and the fewer there are left for you! So these days, you're more likely to be looking for a niche that has only a small number of players, rather than none at all. But - and it's an important "but" - it also has to be a niche with lots of potential customers. If it's a small niche because no one is interested in it, then it's not going to make much money.

For instance, nowadays my "niche" is dance.  I have websites on bellydancing, flamenco, ballet and ballroom dance. There isn't much competition in those niches, especially in belly dancing and flamenco - but when you think about it, there aren't all that many belly dancers or flamenco dancers in the world either! So my potential customer base is also pretty small and therefore my income is extremely modest. I don't mind that, because blogging is just a hobby for me these days, and my dance sites are more of a service to the dance community than a money-making exercise.

 

The other vital ingredient for success (unless you've found a spectacular niche) is backlinks. Not just any backlinks, but backlinks from other established sites on topics that are relevant to your blog.

Serious internet marketers don't leave backlinks to chance, and they don't waste time with social bookmarking or link swapping either, because they know that kind of link doesn't count for much.

Instead, they write more blogs, websites and articles (on article writing sites) to create a spiderweb of one-way links leading to their monetized sites. Are you beginning to get the picture that "passive income online" isn't really that passive after all?

Oh, and in case you're wondering why I'm tinkering with hobby sites instead of using my knowledge to make money, I give the answer in my Hub about my internet journey.

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All text copyright Marisa Wright. Tila Tequila photo by Philip Nelson, Live Streaming Expert. "I'm blogging this" photo courtesy of Antigone78 on Flickr.