How to Start Earning From Your Blog — Right Away

A guest post by Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing

Sure, you want your blog to attract a huge audience and earn bazillions while you sleep. Lots of people are blogging their hearts out trying to achieve this dream.

But while you’re waiting to hit it big, you don’t have to starve. There’s another way to earn from blogging. It doesn’t have the same strike-it-rich potential, but it’ll pay your bills right now.

You can use your blogging skills and blog for pay, for publications and corporations.

No, not for $5 a post. Ignore those ads.

There are blogging gigs out there that pay a very good hourly wage. Taking freelance paid-blogging jobs can let you earn while still leaving time to work on your own site. As a bonus, you get more practice writing blogs, which may improve your own blog’s chances of success.

Here’s how to find good-paying blogging clients and get them to hire you:

1. Make your blog posts awesome and engaging. Even if there are only a few posts on there, make them great — concise and focused on your niche. Think of your blog as a rolling audition for paying gigs. In my experience, paying blog clients want to see three things: that you know how to get comments, stick to a niche topic, and use common blogging platforms such as WordPress and Blogger.

2. Select your targets. Consider where you might likely blog for pay, based on your own interests and work experience. For instance, I was once a legal secretary, so I’ve done some paid blogs for lawyers. Develop a list of publications, companies, or Web portals that might hire you and pay well. Don’t ignore trade publications, as they are often good payers. Once you’ve got some possible prospects, take a look at their websites to see if they lack a blog, or perhaps have a blog that’s short on visitors and infrequently updated.

3. Research your targets. Next, do some sleuthing to discover who might pay well. In general, I find more sophisticated topics and target audiences command better pay and have less writer competition. So blogging about parenting or your dog will not pay well, but writing about acupuncture or business finance likely will. Next, find out if the publication is growing or the company is well-funded. Writers’ groups on LinkedIn are a great place to ask around about a prospective employer. In general, bigger companies will offer better pay.

4. Promote your blog posts in social media. Start spreading your content around. Connect with popular users of social media in the niche where you want to blog for pay.

5. Target prospects with your posts. When you have a post that makes a good audition piece, send it to your prospects (or top social-media influencers) with a note: “I thought you’d enjoy this post.” You can use Twitter, LinkedIn, or just plain email — whatever you think that prospect would respond to best. Even better: Write a post for your blog specifically tailored to appeal to your prospects, then send it to them.

6. Leave comments on key blogs. Another way to connect with well-paying blogs is to leave articulate comments on that blog. Become a regular participant and link to your own blog posts. You may get read, discovered and offered a paying gig.

7. Call on prospects and ask for the job. If the steps above haven’t gotten you asked to blog for pay, it’s time to get proactive. You might call editors and marketing managers on the phone and ask if they need a blogger, send postcards, or perhaps use InMail on LinkedIn (that last boasts an impressive 30% response rate). Experiment and see what works for you. In your pitch, be sure to mention specifics you observed about their Web site, and offer suggestions for how you could improve it with well-written, regular blog posts.

8. Gain visibility. Once you land a paid blogging gig, be sure to get your byline as a live link to your blog, so prospects can easily find you. As your paid blog gets rolling, begin the above steps over again. Make the paid blog great and immediately begin promoting it to better-paying prospects in that niche. Always be aware of how much traffic your paid-blog sites receive, and look to move up to busier — and better-paying — sites.

9. Your paying blog finds you clients. Once you are blogging on a popular site, you often will be approached by other companies in that niche with job offers. At this point, paid blogging markets itself, and you have your pick of additional gigs. I’ve found that one of my paid blogs brings a steady stream of paid-blogging offers. As a bonus, readers of your paid blog may click your byline link and discover your blog as well, giving you possible new readers.

10. Keep raising your rates. As you move up, your rates should increase. Gradually drop lower-paying blog clients in favor of better-paying ones. Think in terms of how long it takes you to create a post, and aim for a rate of $50-$100 an hour. Don’t forget to charge by the hour if the client also wants you to do social-media promotion of your posts, or needs advice on blog-marketing strategy. I’ve seen rates as high as $300 a blog post, and $100 a post is fairly common. Don’t settle for peanuts — keep looking until you find clients who understand how a powerful blog will help build their business.

Have questions about blogging for pay? Leave them in the comments and I’ll try to answer them here on the post.

Carol Tice helps writers earn more at the Making a Living Writing blog, which she used to get paid blogging gigs that earn her more than $5,000 a month. Grab her free report, 40 Ways to Market Your Writing.

Note: Carol’s blog, Make a Living Writing is a winner of the Top Ten Blogs for Writers 2011 Contest


Joining the A-List Blogger Club is like pouring accelerant on your blogging career. I know I’ve cut YEARS off my journey to monetizing my blog by belonging here.
~ Carol Tice of Make a Living Writing

Categories: Blogwriting, Business

Can You Build A Business On Article-Writing Alone?

A Guest Post By Sean DSouza of Psychotactics

Imagine you were to start up an Internet-based business.
And told that to promote your business, you would not be allowed to do any affiliate marketing. Or joint ventures. Or any external publicity. No Twitter, no Facebook, no social media. No pay-per-click advertising. No goo gaa search engine optimisation. All you had was one weapon: The ability to promote your business through article writing—and article writing alone. Would that be possible? Is it actually possible to create not just a profitable, but an extreeeeeemely profitable business with article-writing alone?

You guessed the answer, didn’t you?
You instantly knew that it is indeed possible to drop all of the possible strategies you see online, and still generate enormous traffic—and revenues—through article writing alone. And you get that weird feeling of “this makes sense, but makes no sense at all”. Everyone will give you the idea that you need ten or twenty methods to get traffic to your website, and you don’t. You can use just one method—article writing—and have more than enough customers to keep you very comfortable.

But it’s not going to happen tomorrow…
Blogging or writing articles for a year probably isn’t enough to begin with. It’s like having a baby for a year, and saying “Why can’t this baby walk, talk and dance?” It usually takes more than two-three years for a business to really be walking, talking and dancing. And then the walking, talking and dancing depends on how good you get at your writing. If you continue to write crummy headlines and just run of the mill articles, then you can’t expect any one to pay attention. But once you start to write well, your ideas come alive.

And so do strategic alliances…
When we began our business way back in 2001, we had no customers. No subscribers. Nothing. Besides I was a cartoonist, not even a writer. But I sharpened my writing to the point where others started to take notice. And if they didn’t take notice, I’d, um, write to them and make them take notice. So who were these “others”? They were other websites (blogs didn’t exist in such a big way then) that were publishing good content. They’d publish my articles. I’d open my inbox and there would be 50, 60 even 200 subscribers. Can you imagine going to bed and waking up to find 200 emails in your inbox that are not spam? Smiley

But that was 2002, what about today?
Back then there wasn’t so much distraction as you have today, but even so, if your article is outstanding, and it gets published elsewhere you can get 20, 30 or even 50 subscribers from a single article. These aren’t visitors. They’re subscribers. People who come to your site or blog. People who investigate it before parting with their email address. We’re talking about skeptical folk here. And these subscribers, eventually turn to clients if you get them through a sequence—but you already know that.

What you may not know is the power of a single article.
A great article has amazing endurance. An article is not an article is not an article. It’s the starting point to an incredible journey. If you write a series of articles on a topic, it’s even more incredible. If done right, you can leverage an article almost infinitely. But infinite is a big word. So let’s look at a finite universe of why articles (and the ability to write articles) is so darned important. First let’s take the leverage tour, shall we?
How far can one article go?

Let’s take where I can possibly put a single article that I write.
• In the newsletter at Psychotactics.
• In someone else’s newsletter.
• On the Psychotactics website and/or on your blog.
• On someone else’s website and/or blog.
• In our membership site at 5000bc.
• In someone else’s membership site.
• As material at your event, or as part of training.
• As material at someone else’s event (even if you’re not showing up).
• I use it for my newspaper column.
• I can make it a report (e.g. The Headline Report is a single article).
• If I add more articles to it, it can be sold (as this report will be).
• I can use the report as a bonus to sell something else.
• I can use it as an award or prize (when packaged correctly).
• I could then make an audio out of the article.
• And a presentation.
• And a video.

A single article has enormous potential
When combined with several articles, it becomes a report. But don’t underestimate the power of a single article. Our article on headlines was made into a report. It has been downloaded several tens of thousand times and that one article has been the root cause of easily well over tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But there are no shortcuts
You can’t just submit to some article or ezine site and hope to get these kind of results. If you look around you, you’ll find that those who succeed aren’t lazy bums. They’re hard working, and work smart too. And they don’t take shortcuts. They find a medium that works, and they work it like crazy. Which brings us full circle to the question: Can you build a business on article-writing alone?

The answer is yes.
We’ve been in business all these years with no affiliates, no joint ventures, no fancy publicity, no ga ga search engine positioning, no ad words—nothing. Yes, we’ve done the odd thing here and there, and yes we do have a so-so social media presence, but as you’ve worked out, the main strategy has been article writing.

All we’ve ever done is write good stuff and make sure that our customers pass it on.
We write good stuff and attract other blogs and websites who value good stuff, to publish our material. We write good stuff and that good stuff then gets leveraged, making us not just a very sizeable income, but also allows us to take a “three-month vacation” every year since the year 2004.

Can you build a business on article-writing alone? I guess you know the answer, don’t you? Smiley

To read more articles by Sean DSouza—and get a very useful report on “Why Headlines Fail”, go to http://www.psychotactics.com

Categories: Blogwriting, Business, Craft

Use Facebook and Twitter to Drive Crowds to Your Blog

A guest post by Donny Gamble

You have a nicely crafted blog or webpage, in which you put a lot of effort adding that nicely written content, but now you need people to read those posts. Traffic is of major importance, because depending on the number of visitors:

  • You’ll get a better general ranking
  • Your profits will increase – more visitors -> more potential customers
  • You will have higher revenue from the ads

There are several online web marketing tools, but not all of them are ideal for advertising and attracting traffic like a magnet. Facebbok and Twitter are the trendiest and most effective tools, which will definitely help you increase the traffic to your page.

Facebook Marketing – let the whole world learn about you

There are actually 3 ways you can increase your website traffic using Facebook:

Social Ads.

This is an amazing application Facebook has come up with; you can actually connect with the audience that you want (by sending the ads to targeted regions or groups of people). In no time, you will be able to attract the people that you want to your blog/website.

Profile + links

– build yourself a nice profile, and keep in mind to add both pictures and a shot and relevant bio (because people like to see the man behind the ads!), and add some links. One or two should be enough, do not drown your profile page with tens of links.

Continuous updates

- If you simply build a profile and add a link, and then you think crowds will pour into your portal, you are mistaken. You need to add fresh content at least three times a week – updates, company news, links to crispy fresh content.

Tease people with one or two highlights from your article, and call to action: if they want to read more, they will go to your webpage. Be a versatile Facebook user, and once you have a well established presence there, do not let people get bored: be innovative.

Twitter Marketing – short messages, long queues to your webpage

Just keep in mind the 2 top Twitter strategies, and people will visit your page:

Direct (Aggressive) Advertising – a big No- No! - you can send short, timely messages to an entire world using Twitter, but these little messages should not sound like “Buy now..” or “Huge discounts…”. The truth is people get annoyed by this type of blunt advertising, which may have worked back in the 60’s when the “mad men” were fashionable.

Today, elegant advertising is when you post on twitter a link back to a piece of nicely written and highly informative article. Once people are there, reading your content, let them decide if they want to buy or not.

Post helpful tips each day. This way you can have people getting used to your little tips & tricks, and they will wait for them. For instance, if you are selling cosmetics, make sure you add one helpful tip each day about skin care.

Women love that, and you will attract more traffic to your webpage.

In Closing

If you have not realized it yet, social media is here to stay. Everyone is on Twitter and Facebook, why aren’t you?  Become apart of this prestigious community, so that you can start sharing your story and interest to the world.

Donny Gamble is a blogger, marketer, and entrepreneur who shares his blogging tips on his personal blog.  He has just released his new eBook “The Bloggers Roadmap”, which you can get here.

Categories: Business - Tags: , , ,

Why (and How) I Decided to Self-Publish ‘Focus’

By Leo Babauta

When I got a book deal with mainstream publisher at the end of 2007, it was a dream come true for me as a writer. But this year, writing my second book (called “focus“), I decided to forgo the traditional publisher and publish it myself.

Why self-publish? Aren’t I shooting myself in the foot?

There are lots of advantages to getting a big publishing deal, but there are trade-offs as well. I’ll walk you through what I considered the main trade-offs and advantages.

Advantages of a Publisher

One of the biggest advantages, of course, is credibility. When you sign with a real publisher, you are now a published author, while self-publishing still carries a slight air of amateurishness. But that’s changing, and soon there will be very little difference. What matters most is quality, not the name behind you.

The other main advantages of getting a traditional publisher:

  • The advance. When you sign the book deal, your publisher pays you an up-front advance for signing (and also when you submit the manuscript). This is really just the first chunk of your royalties in advance, but if your royalties never meet this advance, you don’t have to pay it back. It’s really nice to get this money up front.
  • Built-in services like editing and printing. There’s an editor on staff, and he or she is usually good, at least at proofreading. They also have things like design and printing and all the other tasks that go with publishing all figured out. You just worry about writing, and then marketing.
  • Distribution. The publisher has a national distribution chain. This, actually, is probably the most important advantage other than credibility. You get your book in bookstores across the nation. That’s incredibly hard to do as a self-publisher.

Disadvantages of Having a Publisher

I’m not trying to knock the publishing industry here — I think publishers are doing the best they can. But it’s good to know the trade-offs, and there are a few:

  • Loss of control. You don’t control everything when you turn your book over to someone else. The type of printing and print quality, how many books are printed, how the electronic and audio versions are done, and much more are out of your control. The part I didn’t like was that I couldn’t distribute a free version of my book, or release copyright. That was a deal-breaker for me, at least for this second book.
  • No real marketing help. This isn’t just something to do with my publisher — I’ve heard the same from lots of authors. My publisher helped me line up radio show interviews, which was helpful, but did little else. I did tons of work in marketing the book — in fact it was like a full-time job.
  • Loss of profits. The author really only gets a small percentage of sales in a traditional deal. Part of it goes to costs like printing, part goes to distributors, part to the bookstore, part to the publisher, part to your agent. When you self-publish, you get just about everything after your costs, with the exception of whatever you have to give to Amazon or other online distributors.
  • Loss of flexibility. I love self-publishing because it means I can do it however I want, and not only control everything but change things at a whim. If I decide to lower prices to increase sales, I can. If I want to throw in bonus files, I can. There’s nothing set in stone — I make up everything and can change it as I please.

Why I Decided to Self-Publish

There are lots of reasons, but basically I wanted the control over my book that I didn’t have before. I wanted to be able to release copyright, and that’s very hard to do with a traditional publisher.

I also wanted to be able to publish in as many formats as I wanted, when and how I wanted. I wanted to remove the bureaucratic layers needed to do anything — as a self-publisher, the only person I need to get permission from is myself.

Things move much faster when I’m a one-man team: I can fix files and re-upload them, I can change the price if I think it was too high, I can issue refunds immediately, I can listen to people and improve the product, I can say whatever I want, do things my way.

Sure, I lose out on the advantages of a traditional publisher, but they’re not a big deal to me. I don’t need the advance as I wrote the book in between my regular work. I don’t need the editor as I had readers help me edit. I don’t need the printer as I found ways to publish myself (see next section).And while I lose out on the nation-wide distribution in bookstores that I’d have with a traditional publisher, I can still sell my book around the world, through my website, and not have to pay the premium to the publisher so that I can get into the bookstore.

As a nice side-benefit, I get all profits. Which makes sense, as I’m doing all the work. I was doing most of the work under a traditional publisher before as well, but only making a fraction of the profits.

How I’m Doing It

First, I decided to write the book publicly, online. So as each chapter has been written, I posted the drafts online and asked for feedback. That turned out to be brilliant — people gave me feedback instantly, instead of only after the book was published, so the final product was much better. Also, writing the book in public helped me stay motivated throughout the writing process, which can be a lonely and dreadful thing if we’re honest with ourselves.

Second, I published the book online and as a freely downloadable ebook — it’s free and uncopyrighted. You don’t have to give me your email address to get it. Why did I do this? I want people to read it and get something from it. If they don’t have to pay or give me their email address, they’re more likely to read it. And if they like it, they can email it to someone else or post a link on Facebook or Twitter. That’s a great thing, for me as a writer.

So how am I making money? I have a premium digital version, which has extra chapters from me plus bonus chapters written by other authors, along with videos, audio interviews with experts, and bonus PDF guides. Enough people have bought it after reading the free version that it’s already a great success.

I’ve also published the book in Amazon’s Kindle store, for $8.99, but it doesn’t include the bonus files. If you buy the premium version, by the way, you’ll get the Kindle file as well, along with an epub formatted file so you can read the book on the iPad or other ebook reader. I plan to put the book in Apple’s iBook store soon.

Finally, the print version will come out in a matter of weeks. It’s the final stage in my self-publishing of the book. I’ve been wrestling with printing the traditional way (off-set printing) vs. Print on Demand (POD), but I’m going with POD because it’s less expensive, more flexible, and way easier for me. The print version will be available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and my website, among other places.

Next Week: Details

For those who want the nitty gritty details on all of the stages of self-publishing that I’ve gone through, I’ll post more details next week. That’ll include a quick rundown of things like: dealing with different formats, setting up a publishing company, buying ISBNs, setting up Print on Demand, selling via the Kindle and iBook stores, uploading files to e-junkie for download, and so on.

Leo Babauta is the creator of Zen Habits and mnmlist, and the author of focus.

Categories: Business

12 Life Lessons from Warren Buffett to Being a More Compassionate Writer

Guest post by Scott Dinsmore of ReadingForYourSuccess

Last week I spent a day with Warren Buffett at his annual meeting. The education was profound, and surprisingly serves to make us all better writers, bloggers and entrepreneurs.

12 Life Lessons from Warren Buffett:

1. Lose money and I will forgive you, but lose even a shred of reputation and I will be ruthless. This has been echoed across the business world for years and it applies to us all. Life is too short to cut corners to make an extra buck. Wealth can always be recreated but reputation takes a lifetime to build and often only a moment to destroy. As Warren says, “we will not trade reputation for money.” In the world of blogging, we are writing because we love it. It’s not for the money. This makes reputation more important than anything. Remember this when you are contemplating rushing to monetize your site by filling it with ads, links, etc.

2. The best defense in a tough economy is to add the most you can to society. Your money can be inflated away but your knowledge and talent cannot. No matter the external circumstances, you are always in control of your talent, learning and passion for life. There will always be opportunities for talent. This is the most empowering thing about web entrepreneurship and blogging. Develop those skills with the constant focus on helping others and you will never be without a job.

3. We get worried when people start to agree with us. The best fruit is found out on the limbs. The road less traveled makes all the difference. Make a rule to always stay on the side of the minority in your life’s path and you will be greatly rewarded. Not to mention it will be magnitudes more exciting. These are exactly the topics that people want to read about. Get a little edgy with your posts. Say something fresh. It will stick with your visitors and they’re likely to come back.

4. We celebrate wealth only when it’s been fairly won and wisely used. The goal is not to make money at all costs. It’s easy to forget that in a lot of industries and sub-cultures around the world where everyone is in constant competition. And this can especially be the case when so many of us spend hours upon hours writing and developing our web services for free. Do not rush it and do not get greedy. Help others and the fruit will be there. Wealth is worthless if you’ve destroyed all your relationships to attain it. Take the high road. It’s far less crowded. A bit sad but often true. Makes it pretty easy to stand out.

5. When you are exceptional you jump off the page. There really isn’t that much competition there. Be your own best competitive advantage. Then it doesn’t make a difference what others are doing. You are in control. In blogging, entrepreneurship and life, there are few people really willing to give it their all. Do this and your supporters will love you for it (they will also likely multiply).

6. Do what you’re passionate about. If you do this, there will be few people competing or running faster than you. The best way to be exceptional is with passion! As Tony Robbins says every day of his life, “Live with Passion!” And trust me, life is a lot more fun this way. I cannot think of a better motivator to get you to write for free and love it, than to jump out of bed dying to teach and help others.

7. I think I developed courage when I learned I could deal with hardship. You need to get your feet wet and get some failure under your belt. Courage does not grow on its own. Just like a muscle, it must be constantly worked out and developed. Life begins outside your comfort zone and that’s where courage is developed. Most people don’t succeed because they’re afraid to fail. Failure isn’t that bad anyway. It will make you tougher and more likely to win the next time around. If I had a dime for every time I heard someone tell me about an idea they wanted to pursue or how much they would like to give blogging a shot, without an ounce of action to follow…well, I might own a few more shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock. No one has succeeded without going through their own failures at some point. To try and to fail is much better than to never try. Why not get started early and get some of them out of the way! What’s the worst that could happen? As big wave surfer Laird Hamilton says “If you’re not falling then you’re not learning.”

8. There’s no better way to be happier than getting your expectations down. Most unhappiness comes from misaligned and unrealistic expectations of life. Expect the world of yourself, but expect nothing of the world. Then you cannot help but live your life pleasantly surprised. When I first started blogging a few years ago, I had these huge aspirations of how quickly I’d have a massive following. When it didn’t happen immediately, it got me down. Write and develop your business online with the expectation of it being a charity project to help others. Anything in addition will be icing on the cake.

9. If the only reason you find for doing something is because others are doing it then that’s not good enough. In fact, if everyone else is writing on a topic, maybe that’s the one best to avoid. Tim Ferriss is a master at evading the majority with his 4-Hour Work Week philosophy. Learn to be comfortable on your own path.

10. Decide early in life to make your money by selling things that you really believe are good for the customers. Make this a rule before you write another word to your readers or offer another product to your customers. Life is too short and your reputation too fragile to not have your audience first and foremost in your mind and in your heart. Rules like this make it very difficult to lose.

11. We’ve done a lot of stupid things but we’ve avoided a small subset of stupidity and that subset is important. It’s about avoiding the dumb things. Warren’s success does not come from doing so many things right. It comes from avoiding the things that are terribly wrong. Some say this is two sides of the same coin. It’s not. It requires a fundamental shift in psychology. The stories are endless of people who did a few things right and were massively successful, but then did something stupid that took them back to zero. Before Warren does anything, he and his partner “invert, always invert.” They list every way imaginable in which they could fail at a particular task and then take massive effort to avoid those failures. Do this for your blog or business and the success will come automatically. Always ask yourself, what would disappoint my readers or customers? Then don’t do it.

12. Go to bed a little wiser than when you woke up. This is the crux of the whole meeting. Life is about learning. If you are always learning you can never lose. Keep this as your only rule for the day and the world will be yours for the taking. There has been no better way for me to continue to add value to my readers and followers than this life maxim. Follow it and you will never run out of posts to write or people to serve.

The lessons from Warren are endless. We all stand to learn to be better people, writers and entrepreneurs from what he’s willing to share. He doesn’t charge any money or ask for anything in return. Except of course that we live a life with a burning desire to learn and do all we can to be valuable additions to society. Keep this as the foremost mission of your business or blog and your time spent will be well rewarded.

Read more action-provoking posts by Scott Dinsmore, a writer, and entrepreneur. You can read more by Scott at Reading For Your Success.

Image: The Street

Categories: Blogwriting, Business, Habits, Reading

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