As it is, blogs did not really take off till the late 1990s. However, they gained popularity after the year 2000. Most of the initial blogs were generally lists of links with a few commentaries. Ever since then, they have evolved and are today gained immense popularity. These days, there are a number of websites, where users are allowed to post their own blogs. Some people may write just for the sake of fun as they discuss their observations with their family or friends. For some, they may be used for making political statements, providing research information, promoting products, as well as giving tutorials. Some others may use it for earning a few bucks as well. In fact, earning money through writing weblogs, has emerged as a major activity on internet. In fact, some of the people make their living by writing blogs. If you wish to earn some money through blogging, then there are a few things that you should do.

One of the very first requirements in this regard is to build up an audience. Your website should receive a steady flow of visitors. You can then earn money through paid advertisers, by way of pay per clicks. You can also earn money through contextual ad programs like those that are offered by various search engines. When visitors click on the advertisement links on your blog, you would earn some money for every click. The money offered on every click may differ with advertiser to advertiser.

You will also find several professional blogging websites, which allow users to earn money by writing weblogs. With such companies, you usually write weblog posts each day, or at times more than that, on a specific subject which the weblog deals with. The website may offer a basic rate for this, or may offer a percentage of advertising revenue generated by your posts, usually between twenty five to fifty percent. Depending on popularity of your posts, such profit may range from a few bucks to thousands of dollars. You can also earn by simply putting a link to your main website, if your website is engaged in the sales of any product or service.

Everybody seems to be interested in weblogs these days. Weblogs written by musicians, politicians, sports figures, novelists, newscasters and other prominent figures can be found on the internet. However, many times such entries do lead to controversies. Nevertheless, blogging remains a popular activity and is here to stay.

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And right here, we’ll take a look at both of them – their strengths, their weaknesses, and which one should you use. Let’s go!

Blogger From Google

If you don’t have even a dime to invest for blogging, by all means go for Blogger – the free blogging platform designed by Google. It’s beginner friendly and it’s very easy to use. True, you need to know a couple of HTML codes if you want to add more features to your Blogger blog…BUT trust me, you could master them like the back of your hand within a day or two.

However, Blogger is not without its weaknesses or setbacks. And I think you deserve to know them before you dive in. Here are some of them –

- First and foremost, you’re blog is never yours! It’s still Google’s. That means if you want to sell your blog, you’re out of luck. Not to mention Google can delete your blog when they want it and how they want it. Believe me, I’ve seen many great Blogger blogs go down into flames in this fashion.

- As for the functions and options, they’re very limited. The amount of templates is very limited as well. If you’re going to use Blogger, expect that you’re bound to come across a blog that a design and template that looks just like yours.

And that’s just to name a few!

Here’s the bottom line – if you’re a total blogging beginner and if you don’t have anything to invest in your online ventures, Blogger is the best way to go to get your hands dirty and your feet wet…prepping you for a paid and more advanced platform, which is…

WordPress

If you’re an advanced blogger looking for a platform that gives you flexibility when it comes to options and functions, then WordPress is for you. You can also take advantage of WordPress for free…BUT bloggers who are using it buy hosting and a domain name…for good reason!

- Plugins – they’re your best buddy (the good ones) and your worst enemy (the ones that suck BIG time) when it comes to adding functionality and options to your WordPress Blog.

- You get to own your blog…IF you buy a domain name.

- A look around the net will reveal tons of themes and templates that you can use. Some are paid and some are free. Not to mention many of them looks really professional.

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You have spent a lot of money on domain and web hosting and build a great blog for the people. You don’t want to loose it any time if there is problem from hosting provider or else from your side. To be safe from such problems back up of your blog is important. It makes us our blog survive. I have come across such situations so I experienced the importance of having back up of your blog. Having back up of your blog simple and if you loose important data of your blog anytime you can upload the blogs database, theme files and customizations. Saving and uploading these things will replace our blog completely.

They are basic things we need to have to have proper backup.

1) WordPress back up plugin

2) FTP client ( To save imp files when you want)

WordPress Back up Plugin :-

This plugin can be downloaded for free. It is must have plugin for any wordpress blog. This is the advantage of having wordpress blog. You can download one from here . If you want you can back up just for now then you can download it to your computer, server or email database to your email address. You can choose which should be downloaded. Select the options and download it.

If you want to skip the above step and do the database back up automatically for you then you can enter your email to which you want back up. You can choose for how many days the back up have to be done. It is better to choose daily option, so that you can have back up of database on daily basis. I have chosen to have back up on daily basis. When ever if some damage happens to your blog then you can replace the blog just by uploading the database. You can upload the database by going to your hosting account in MySql section.

Downloading Theme files Through FTP:-

If you have did not change anything in theme files then you can leave it. You don’t need to download theme files. But if you have made any customizations to your theme files then you can download the theme files via FTP client like FileZilla. When you upload the downloaded theme files it will replace all the customizations you have before the damage of your blog. For example now I have installed free UBD money maker theme, I need not download it if I did not make any changes to it, but here I have made some customizations so I will download it.

Besides downloading all these files you must also download the sub-url’s or sub-domains by going to .htaccess located in your hosting account.By downloading the sub-url’s you can replace the archives of your blog or else you will loose it.So start back up of your blog to avoid things in future.

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Last month I did not post the income report but this month I am posting the income report. Last month I made some good affiliate sales but did not make much income from adsense because I am not displaying adsense from few days on my blog. I gained lot of knowledge about making money online and learned few things about black hat method. Later I will discuss what is blackhat? It is not important what we have learned it is important to put the trick in to play. My last wish is to learn PPC marketing and few things about black hat method. The income breakdown for the last month

Adsense:- $2.86

Sponsorships:- $ 45

Private Ads:- $0

Advertising Cost:- $0

Affiliate Sales :- $570

Total Revenue:- $615

I have made good income with affiliate marketing.I want move forward by learning new things and putting them in to play.

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There would be confusion among bloggers whether to blog for money or fun. I have discussed in earlier post that just concentrate on developing content and traffic then dollars flow in automatically. There are various methods through which bloggers can make money.

Contexual Advertising:-

These are most common methods to make money online. This method is utilized by many bloggers online because they are natural money makers. This methods include Adsense , MSN Adcenter and YPN ( Yahoo Publisher Network) which are very popular among bloggers .Adsense is open to people all over the world but where as YPN ( Yahoo Publisher network) is open to US residents only. Bloggers can make money by just embedding a piece of ad-code on their blog. We will make money on click basis. They don’t work better with general/politics blogs. It is advisable to follow their terms and conditions strictly or else there is chance of getting banned. We will discuss later about adsense in detail.

There is also other CPC advertising like chitika eminimalls is also good for making money. It can be used along with adsense. They produce good results in combination with adsense.

Impressions Based Ads:-

We can make money by displaying impressions based ads. The pay varies from program to program. But most of the programs pay per thousand impressions. I did not use the impression based till now. It only works for the blogs which have millions of visitors every day.

Text link ads:-

This is beautiful and quite easy way to make money by selling text links on our blog. The examples are adbrite, Text link ads. We can control our ad space. They have big network of advertisers so we need not look for advertisers. The system is totally automated. The advertiser’s offers ad after that it is in our hand to accept it or not.Having page rank is the eligibility to get in to making money by this method.

Sponsorship:-

This is latest money making system that has been launched for small bloggers in 2006. It has opened gates for small bloggers to make something out of blogging. Bloggers charge $5 at least per sponsorship. The rate depends on the traffic and page rank they have. The sponsorships include Payperpost, Reviewme, Sponsored Reviews and Smorty. These are biggest sponsorship programs through which bloggers get sponsorship assignments. Bloggers also get private sponsorships. I use to get sponsorships on my free blogs from advertisers. Every niche blog can get sponsorships from this sponsorship programs. If a blog have page rank and traffic then he can make quick buck with sponsorship whether the visitors buys the product or not.

Affiliate Programs:-

Every body asks what is affiliate programs? The affiliate programs are a huge collection of advertisers or merchants whose product can be promoted by us through blogs or websites. We make money when some one buys a service or product for the company. Some of the popular affiliate programs today are Commission Junction (popularly known as CJ ), Never Blue Ads(NBA), Market Leverage(ML) and Hydra Network.

It takes lot of time and research to make money with affiliate programs. But if you come to know the key then you will make good decent income from them.

Selling Flipping Blogs:-

I did not sell any of my blog , as you know this is first self hosted blog. But selling flipping blog is done by most of bloggers. It is the bloggers wish that he want to sell his blog or not. In this great financial crisis bloggers realized that every time is not same. I use selling flipping blog only when I need money. Most of the bloggers sell their blogs at sitepoint. But blogging experiment makes most of the money by selling flipping blogs. Blogging Experiment shows how to make money online by selling/flipping blogs.

Donations:-

This is been used by most of the bloggers last year. It will work only if we have large readership.

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