Can I Really Make Money Blogging?

Blogging is nothing new to the Internet. Starting out as a creative outlet, as well as a place for people to share their personal journals online with family and friends, it eventually branched out, becoming a way for experts and people of all types to share information and advice. Now, blogging is a popular way for people to make money online.

Easy for Beginners
Blogging is probably the easiest tool for earning some extra money online. It requires little to no investment or start-up cash. Blogs are loved by search engines because they are updated frequently, unlike websites, which are usually updated less often.

Blogs are Popular
Every day, millions of people visit blogs for entertainment and informational purposes. Most blog visitors log on and come back often to check for new blog entries.

Readership
The common blog reader is also a blogger themselves, and will often link to your blog if they like your posts, increasing your reader base, as well as your earning potential. Using Google AdSense to insert paid ads into your blog is the most popular way to generate an income from your blog.

Earning from Ads
By learning the most effective placement of ads on your blog, you can persuade visitors to click on them. Each click that you get, you will earn a share of the profits from Google AdSense. Your earnings will be small at first, but with time, and with more quality content on your blog, you can begin earning a substantial amount of money.

Traffic
The more traffic you drive to your blog, the more money you can earn with AdSense. The most important thing to remember when displaying AdSense ads is to make them highly visible and accessible on your blog. The more people who click on the ads, the more money you will make.

Selling Ad Space
Another way to make money with your blog is to sell advertisement space. Advertisers are always looking for popular blogs for which to place their ads. Most are willing to pay you for ad placement based on the traffic your blog generates as well as the location of the ad space.

Monetizing Ads
You can monetize your ad space in several ways. You could charge a flat fee, charge based on the number of click-throughs that the ad receives, or take a percentage of the sale of a product that you advertise, which is called affiliate marketing.

The more popular your blog becomes, the more willing advertisers are to compete for ad space.

Share What You Love!
As you can see, blogging is a good way to earn money by sharing thoughts, feelings, and information with your readers. You should choose a topic that has high search traffic. You can launch a free blog today with Blogger.com, implement ads and offers, and start seeing your income build steadily over time.

Just make sure you add content regularly, and that your content is quality information that visitors will want to read.

6 Coolest Plugins for Multi-Author Blogs

Do you have a multi-author blog? Are you looking to make your life easier and the lives of your writers? Here are 6 cool plugins that will streamline multi-author publishing.

1.) Future Calendar - Adds a calendar to the post edit page that allows you to see what days you already have posts scheduled. Great for those bloggers who like to schedule ahead of time, and for multi-author blogs. Have your authors schedule articles for days that are not already filled, and you'll be on your way to having a post scheduled every day.

2.) Pre-Publish Reminders - Remind yourself and your writers what they need to double check before they hit "publish". You customize what reminders you want, and a checklist of reminders is displayed on the edit page.

3.) Role Manager - Go beyond the default wordpress roles. Control the abilities of each role, from contributor to editor, and even add new and customized roles.

4.) Theme My Login - Style your login page to match the rest of your site.

5.) Wordpress Admin Notepad - Leave important messages and reminders to other writers, right on the dashboard. Other writers, editors,and admins will see the note when they login.

6.) WP Status Notifier - Want to edit or approve contributor articles before they are published? WP Status Notifier will email you when there are posts pending and waiting for your review.

Did I miss something? What cool plugins have you found for your multi-author blog?