Writing for Your Wealth

I love it when people ask questions, because it lets me know what they (you!) want to learn about when it comes to “writing for your wealth.”

Today, I’m going to answer some questions sent to me by David the Freelance Writer.

“I truly love to write, and I even enjoy the research a lot of writing takes, but I really don’t know how to get started with a blog, draw enough people to my site to interest advertisers, or how to set all that up. Could you steer me to articles or sites that explain the process you described for those of us who don’t know all the lingo yet? Is there a ‘how to make $ writing a blog for dummies’ book out that would explain this step by step.”

Okay, let’s start with the basics.

What Is a Blog?

A blog, short for web log, is a type of website with a user interface that makes it easy to update, or create “posts” for, without any knowledge of html or other programming languages. These posts are typically displayed in chronological order with most recent entries at the top.

For a more thorough description, check out this wonderful post from Problogger: What Is a Blog?

Why Does Every Writer Need a Blog?

If you intend to make money as a writer, whether through authoring a book or freelancing or publishing your own content to your own sites, the blog will be your cornerstone asset.

It can make money in and of itself (you can place advertisements next to your content as well as “affiliate links”–being an affiliate of an Internet shop is like working on commission so you get a percentage cut if a product is sold through your link), but it can also be the means by which you attract potential buyers or clients.

There are several reasons blogs work well for attracting people:

1. The ease of updating a blog (no coding required) means you can post regularly without a big time investment.

2. Your blog software will “ping” blog indexing services that are devoted to monitoring what’s going on in the blogosphere (an example is Technorati), making it easy for the world to see that you’ve updated your site.
3. By default, blogs let readers leave comments, which allows a conversation to begin and facilitates the formation of a community with you as the organizer who brought everyone together.
4. Blogs have a grass roots beginning, and even though many have been commercialized, most are still updated by a single person. Folks often trust a blog more than a big business site.
5. Through your posts, readers get a feel for your expertise and your writer’s voice, even as they get a glimpse into your life. In short, blogs can humanize your business (and, yes, we writers are in a business–as soon as we decide to make money, that becomes true!).

*Note: A blog need not be your whole site. It can exist on a portion of your site while in another area you can have a shopping cart where someone can buy your book or ebook. In yet another section, you might have sample chapters. The blog is often the means by which you get people to your site, but if they like your style and jive with your message, they’ll probably explore farther.

How to Get Started with a Blog

There are two ways to get started with a blog. You can purchase a domain name (ex. http://yournameoryourbusiness.com), a web hosting package (I use site5.com), and install blog software (Wordpress is popular and free) in the space provided by your web host. The other option is to sign up with a free blog company, such as Blogger, where a wizard guides you through creating your first blog.

For a professional blog–one that is going to make you money in one way or another–you should definitely get your own domain name, hosting space, and have your own blog installed. (Read my earlier post on why it’s a good idea to install your own blog and have full control over it.)

However, if you’re brand new to blogging, and you just want to get some practice in, then there’s nothing wrong with starting with a freebie site. Blogger makes it very easy to get up and running in a few minutes by following the prompts and filling in the boxes. You can even tinker with learning the ropes, attracting visitors, and making money with a free blog.

I should note that once your blog is set up, it’s equally easy to update both types of blogs (self-hosted and hosted on free sites). If you’re not a techy type, you can pay someone to set up your domain name, hosting, and do the initial blog set up for you.

How to get people to your blog

It’s easy to get started writing to a blog, but getting noticed is a little harder. If you want to make money, whether through advertising or attracting potential book buyers, then you need people to come to your site.

There are books written on traffic generation and search engine optimization (SEO), so I’ll just do a brief explanation here.

As far as the business aspect goes, the best types of visitors are the ones who find our blog through the search engines. This is because they specifically logged on to look for information on a topic and were led to your blog when it appeared in the search engine results.

In order to be found in those search engine results, you may want to do some “keyword research.” This means figuring out what people are typing in to look up topics related to your niche.

For example, let’s say you’re writing about weight loss. You might want to find out if more people are typing in “weight loss” or if “diet” trumps that term in popularity. Then you may want to name your site and choose your URL using whichever is the more popular term. If a keyword is located in the title, the URL, and the content of the site, search engines know that site is going to be more relevant to searchers looking for information on that subject.

A free spot where you can tinker around and see which terms are most popular for your niche is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.

Not only can you see how frequently terms are being searched each month, but you can get an idea for how much merchants are bidding per click for keywords in your niche. This can help you identify which subjects are more likely to be profitable for you. We’ll talk about that more in future posts though.

Using keywords in your title, URL, content, etc. is part of what’s called on-page SEO. How well your site ranks in the search engines for your keywords also depends on off-page elements, especially links.

The more links pointing to your blog from other sites, the more authority your site is deemed to have. If a lot of people are linking to you, then your site must be a good resource (that’s the assumption anyway–a lot of people do work to game the system). In addition, it helps if people link to your site with your keywords in the link text.

Okay, how are we doing? Clear as mud?

If you’re new to all this, it’s natural for it to sound like industry jargon, but as you work on building your blog and getting more visitors, you’ll start seeing these suggestions frequently, and everything will eventually click.

For now, just know that it’s important to get links to your site. We’ll talk more about how to get those links in the future, but in the beginning, you can just ask friends with blogs to help you get started by linking to your site!

Books and sites for beginning bloggers

You could spend days and days reading all the content Darren Rowse has put up at Problogger, so that is my site recommendation. In the center of his site, he has a section that lists popular posts, and there is a beginners series. Check that area out if you are new to blogging, and then explore more from there.

As for books, I’ll post a few links below. They’ll take you to Amazon, where you can read the reviews, but if you’re trying to save bucks, I know many library systems will have these too.

This first one I read a couple years ago. It covers more than just blogs, and gives you an overall idea of ways to make money online. I think it would be a good resource for beginners:

Money For Content and Your Clicks For Free: Turning Web Sites, Blogs, and Podcasts Into Cash

I also have Joel Comm’s book on Adsense, though it is more geared toward people who already have websites and are looking to monetize them. It’s basically a primer to Adsense (all of the information can be found online, but sometimes it’s nice to have it all in one place):

The AdSense Code: What Google Never Told You About Making Money with AdSense

Let me also give you the link to the “Dummies” book on blogging. I haven’t read it myself, but from the contents list, it looks like it might be a good starting point:

Blogging For Dummies

And finally, here is Darren Rowse’s book:

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

This one is still in my to-read stack, but I have been reading Darren’s blog for three years, and I know it will be a good resource.