How to Make Money Writing a Blog

Why do you write? I personally write because it's my passion, and because I enjoy sharing my knowledge and experience with others. However, I've found that in order to make money from writing, you have to do a few things. You have to write your articles in such a way that others will be able to find them in web searches, you have to promote your writing in the right places, and you have to take advantage of affiliate programs. I will discuss each of these briefly in this hub.

This is called search engine optimization, or SEO for short, and it's important for anyone who has a blog, or writes on sites like Yahoo! Voices, and wants their work to be found. The key to search engine optimization is to find out what keywords in your niche receive the most hits in web searches, and write articles or blog posts that contain those keywords. For example, if I'm writing an article about writing an ebook, I might choose a keyword phrase like "how to write an ebook for Amazon." I then would have to make sure to use that keyword phrase a few times in my article - I would want to use it in my title, and a few times throughout the article - once in the opening paragraph probably, a few times throughout the article, and then at least once more in the closing paragraph.

It's not enough just to write search engine optimized artlcles, though. You also have to promote them in the right places. What are the "right" places? Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin are always good. When promoting your articles on these sites, you'll especially want to promote them in any groups you belong to that relate to the subject of your article. For example, I promote a lot of my blog posts in groups that I belong to that have to do with ebook writing or publishing.

Social networking sites aren't the only places you can promote your writing though. You can also promote your writing on message boards that relate to your article's topic, and also in comments on blogs that relate to your article's topic. One word of warning, however - when commenting on blog posts and adding to conversations on message boards, make sure that you're adding something of value - don't just comment to promote your writing, or you may end up getting banned from the blog or message board. Another way you can promote your writing is by doing guest posts on other blogs. Again, when writing guest posts, unless the blog owner specifically asks you to write about your writing, make sure you stick to the topic the blog owner asks you to write about, and then maybe throw in some references to your writing throughout the blog post, as appropriate.

If you have a blog, one great way to make money from it is to take advantage of different affiliate programs. There are several that you can take advantage of, such as Amazon Affiliates and Infolinks. You make money from these affiliate programs in different ways - with Amazon Affiliates, the best way to make money is to write posts that mention different products and include the product links in the post. Infolinks works by highlighting different words in your blog posts in green and double underlining them - if someone clicks on the link, you get paid for it.

I hope this post has provided some insight about how to make money from your writing. Having passion is good, and so is wanting to share your experiences with the world. However, if the world can't find your writing, and you don't include at least some affiliate links in your writing, then you won't achieve your goals.