One of the most exciting and low (or nil) investment home business opportunity is blogging.
What is a weblog?
A weblog (or simply blog) is more like an online diary where you keep writing stuff of your interest or hobby, share pictures and videos and further discuss those topics with your readers of similar interests. In other words, you write (post) things as and when you get ideas or thoughts in an online space and it is publicly available for anyone to read and share.
Advantages of blogging business
Basically, blogging can be done from anywhere and anytime. All that would need is an Internet connected PC or laptop and some free time. For that matter you can even blog from a mobile phone. You don’t need to have an office space or hire people to run it and whenever income starts coming in it is all yours. Moreover, it is a great hobby that improves your writing skills while fetching in a huge number of readers for your thoughts from across the globe.
How do blogs make money?
Well, you do not start making money immediately. But as you keep posting more and more and articles, people (not just your friends and family people) start visiting your blog via search engines (such as Google or Yahoo) or via shared links on Facebook etc. With your blog visitors increasing, you have great potential to include advertisements on your blog. These advertisement networks (such as Google AdSense) pay you based on the number of visitors or clicks on those ads.
Tip: Please note that you have to wait for at least six months and have a good number of posts (say 30 or 40) on your blog before applying for a free account with these Ad networks.
How to Create a Blog?
It is in fact as easy as 1-2-3 if you go with free blogging platforms.
As a beginner in blogging, it is good to get started with the known free blogging services such as Blogger by Google. Once you visit blogger.com, you can sign in using your Google account (or create one).
After logging into Blogger.com, based on what kind of topics you want to write on your blog, you have to choose a name for your blog. Try to choose a blog name that makes sense (e.g. Mel’s Gardening Blog) and depending on that name you have to choose an address (URL) for your blog (For example, melgardeningblog.blogspot.com).
Tip: For making money from your blog it is always better to stick to one specific niche (e.g. gardening, cooking, pets, parenting etc) as your blog’s main content category. Generic personal blogs do not command the same monetizing potential as niche blogs
After the settings are complete, you can now start customizing the look and feel of your blog by picking one of the color schemes and templates. Then you need to fill in other details such as blog title and description, a short profile of you and probably the very first post on what your blog stands for. After that it is all your world and you can start writing posts organized into well defined labels and categories.
Tip: To popularize your blog, be a visitor to other similar blogs, make comments there (using your blog address and your name) and be part of the community that you belong to. You will be surprised that you actually make numerous blog friends around you that helps increasing the traffic. You may also share your blog posts in your Facebook or other social network accounts
After a few months into blogging and having created some good content, you can start monetizing your blog using Google AdSense or by promoting certain affiliate products through your blog. I shall talk about the blog monetizing strategy very soon in another article here. Another related topic to blogging is to have your own blog domain name (e.g. melsgardeningblog.com) which is again the topic for another article. However, if you need to register a domain name and a good hosting package, HostGator is one of the best hosting providers to begin with. You may check out this hostgator coupon site to check out the latest hosting coupons and deals.
Good luck with your Blog home business initiative!
