How to Get Paid for Blogging

To get started with paid blogging, first you need a blog- no exceptions. Even if you are looking to get hired as a blogger for someone else, you will have to have a blog to show them as a sample.

Often the blog will have to be a few months old before the real paid blogging can kick in, so start the blog as soon as possible. Once the blog is about three months old, you can begin to get paid blogging gigs and sponsored reviews and posts. Yes, it is possible to earn a steady income as a blogger. I know several people who earn a few hundred a month as bloggers, myself included. Of course, there are people who make much, much more.

There are several sites that will pay you for a blog post that advertises their product. You will generally have to apply to them to get an approval for the blog. Most companies require that the blog be at least three months old and that it has been updated often. Some of the bigger paid blogging companies require that no more than seven days goes by without a post, and some companies require posting more often.

If you are using WordPress, you can timestamp the posts so that they come out whenever you want them to. You can write a batch of posts all at once and have them come out on the days you choose.

If you use Blogger, that's not possible to do. However, one trick I learned is that if you don't have time to post something, you can start a post, put a couple of words in it and save the post without publishing it. When you do get around to writing the post, the day that it was started will be saved and it will read as that day instead of the day that you finish the post.

Once you have a blog up and running, you have to submit it to a couple of search engines. Do NOT pay anyone to do this. Most of the smaller search engines are worthless. The only ones you need to submit to are Google, Yahoo and MSN. The other search engines get very little traffic and are not worth the time. The majority of your views will likely come through Google, so submit to this one as soon as possible.

Use social bookmarks to get a few links to your blogs, which most paid posting companies require in order to approve your blog. If there are no links to your blog, many companies will not approve it for paid posting.

Look for paid blogging sites that will sponsor posts about their advertisers. Check out the links below for some of the best sites. For most companies, it takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks to get a blog approved.

Getting paid to keep an entire blog is different from getting sponsored posts. Usually a small client or a company will pay a blogger to keep a regular blog about the topic of their choice. The blog won't be yours, but in many cases you can get paid more by writing for other people's blogs than you can by monetizing your own blogs. Imagine your earnings if you ghostblog for five or 10 blogs at the same time.

To find paid blogging positions, there are several sites to visit. For any of these positions, you will have to have at least one blog to show as a sample. Be sure that it is proofread and updated regularly to make the best impression. The following links are great places to find paid blogging positions.

There are several other ways to make money from blogs. Adding AdSense is the first step. This Google program is the one that puts the small text ads on most of the sites you visit. The pay isn't much unless your traffic is large, but it is another source of revenue.

Kontera is another source of revenue. Links are inserted into your text to advertise products or websites. The revenue is similar to the AdSense model.

Use affiliate links. By signing up for various affiliate programs, you can put links to the programs into your blog wherever they fit and benefit any time someone purchases something through those links. Some people do quite well with just affiliate sales. And yes, there are people who make a living through affiliate sales.