Can Blogging Make Money Answered

The common question “Can Blogging Make Money” has been addressed on this website many times and will continue to be explained to our readers, as the answer is an absolute “YES”.

Rich Hill photo

Rich Hill photo

This is what I do for a living full time and then some.  About three years ago I was forced to make a decision as to how to support myself for the rest of my years as I had met with the most enormous disruption in life plans and literally had to start over.

I had been publishing materials on the internet for about 12 years, regarding my life long hobby of genealogy.  Everything I had put up on the net even starting before there was a world wide web, had been presented to fellow genealogists for free.  I never dreamed of trying to make money on genealogy, the net just created opportunities for connections and was very rewarding.

I had been using computers seriously since 1979 and had built companies of technicians that integrated computers into machinery control for automation of various manufacturing processes.  I knew how to create teams of extremely brilliant people and we were very successful at what we did.  All that said I didn’t know beans about programming, web design, graphics, auto responders, ftp, and all the necessary elements required to become good at website publishing.

That all changed with WordPress.  Here was an easy to learn method of publishing on the internet in story form and I concentrated every minute I could spare to learn how this thing works and to start to earn a living on the internet.

Now I have way over 100 web properties in all various levels of success.  More importantly I have carved out a niche that works for me in that not only do I build niche marketing sites for myself, I build, maintain, operate and write high quality blogs for other companies.

If you listen to the audio interview with Beat Schindler on this website you will hear me talk about the 3rd Party Blog program that I pioneered and now work in joint venture with S-GO Consulting where we do the complete blogging program for many different businesses in all different types of industries.  You may read more of this service at my site www.3rdPartyBlog.com.  We do the whole blog, including researching and writing all of the content.  This alone makes me a full time income now.

3rdPartyBlog.com

3rdPartyBlog.com

There is a HUGE need for this type of service and I would encourage all of our readers here on LinkMoney.org to look into the possibility of doing this for businesses in your area.  They need it, they do not know how to blog, or they do not have people that they can assign to a company blog, and you know exactly how to do it.  So go and sell yourself and learn for yourself as to whether or not if blogging can make money.

There I just gave you my most important method of making money online.  Now I want to share with you some information on a tool that I use almost every day.  In our 3rd Party Blog business it is my duty to research and write the content for all of these different blogs that we build.  Now if I had to do it alone I would be totally unable, as we have just too many clients to write for.  So here is what I do.

I do the initial research and first couple of articles, and then I hand the project off to our crack team of professional copywriters.  We have built a team of extremely talented people that are literally scattered all over the world and each and every one of them has super abilities and life experience that qualifies them to write on all of the different subjects that we are presented with.

Ultimately all of their output comes to me for the final edit and for additional items that I might want to include such as emphasizing a client product or a call to action and things that might come to mind at publication time.  Outsourcing is a developed skill that is not easy to acquire to do it properly but I feel as though I am very good at it and we have dedicated writers that will always rise to the occasion of a rush job and believe you me, I love them all for their brilliant talent and dedication.  We couldn’t do this job without them.

Now you might say; “Well just what the heck do you do then Rich?” Here is what I feel is one of the most important parts of this process.  Keyword Research! There I’ve said it.  No matter what niche or subject our clients hire us to blog about, my primary concern is that we make sure that our articles will be indexed well in the search engines.

Just as Willie Sutton answered to the question of “Why do you rob banks?” he said, “Cause that’s where the money is.” Well we do not rob banks, we do not do anything illegal or black hat, but what we absolutely do is to make sure our articles will be keyword rich in subjects that people are presently searching for, and even as, or possibly more important, that the keywords have a high degree of commercial intent.

What does that mean?  Well there are keywords and there are “keywords.” Some popular keywords are searched on for just plain old curiosity or in searching for the answer to a school exam question.  Those keywords do not have any commercial intent.  The searcher is not looking to purchase anything, they are just looking for free information.

We like to use keywords where there is a fair chance that the searcher is interested in making a purchase of a product or where we have a fair chance of promoting something that will make their life better or to solve some problems that are obvious that they would like to have solved.

Now here is how I do this and though this is an affiliate sales product and if you decide to click through and learn more about this product I will more than likely make a commission.  I never advertise anything that I do not use myself and fully believe in and if you know me well enough by now from my writing and presence here on LinkMoney.org then you know I speak the truth.

Micro Niche Finder Ad

Micro Niche Finder Ad

I purchased my own copy of Micro Niche Finder (mnf) software about two years ago and I use it like I said, almost every day.  The man that dreamed this up and offers it to others is James Jones.  He is not a high pressure salesman.  He will explain the benefits of using Micro Niche Finder and it will be up to you to decide if this is for you or not.  Personally I firmly believe that if you publish on the web, that you need it, period.

Since I first invested in my own copy there have been many new versions that have come out, and each and every one of them has made Micro Niche Finder better and better.  You will make a one time purchase and all future updates and first class tech support are yours at no additional cost.

So what I do is to perform the research and then send the keywords to our writers and I start with the mnf tool.  All you do is type in a primary keyword in a niche that you are interested in and in a few seconds the screen will fill with suggested keywords that are relevant to that category.  They tell you approximately how often the keywords are searched for, the strength of competition and the approximate Adword cost of the keyword and will give you an overall view to be able to select the best keywords to use for your articles.

There are other keyword research tools and some of them are excellent also, including the absolutely free tool at https://adwords.google.com and I use these as well and suggest you should too.  However for day to day, quick and easy I always refer to Micro Niche Finder.

Check it out, watch the videos and hear directly from James about just how easy it is to find keywords to use for your articles.

My Dad

My Dad

Oh by the way, that brilliant looking guy in the top photo, well that is the real me.  The logo that I have used for so long that looks like a crazy man, with his Charles Atlas stance, conquering arms up in defiance, well that’s my Dad!

Wishing you the best for the holidays and the most prosperous New Year to come.

Rich Hill

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44 Responses to “Can Blogging Make Money Answered”

  • It is always a pleasure reading your articles. This one is really helpful to proceed on with quality blogging. I agree with you that keywords are the most important factor for getting traffic for our blogs. Keywords are basically for reading minds of readers or people who are looking out for knowledgeable content on internet.

    I think “Micro Niche Finder” can work for me too. Thanks for letting us all know about the featured of this software.

  • Thank you for the nice comment.
    It always amazes me how sometimes the use of two words together or just using the plural or singular of a word might make a huge difference in the popularity of a keyword search. micro Niche Finder and other keyword research tools will help you make the best choice.
    All the best. Rich

  • nice post. i want to try a blog and see if it makes money to me. thanks for the tips on your site.

  • I agree that keyword research should be the basis for all your internet writing. Being able to tell if a word has commercial value is very important also. If you can find out how many other sites use that key word and how many back links they have and the quality of those backlinks you are even further ahead in choosing a niche. Software like you describe or what I use to do this is invaluable.

  • Bruce,
    No doubt about it. The right keywords used in the title and in the first sentence and the last paragraph of a blog post can make all the difference in the world.
    Thanks for visiting, come back often.
    Rich

  • I am finally learning, instead of being cute, to put the keyword in the title -

    and now also including it in the first sentence.

    Some of us are slow learners.

    Now you are telling us to put it at the end too?

    There is no end from what I am learning from much smarter bloggers than me.

    Just ordered “Micro Niche Finder.”

    I have come a long way in the almost three years I have been blogging. (Without all your information)

    Who knows where I will be going next!

  • Hi Corinne,

    Those are the generally accepted places that it is recommended to have the keywords. Now that said, that works best for the average niche product marketers that are trying to sell something. With a gifted writer such as yourself who comes from the dead tree media world, keyword placement is not exactly critical because you know how to write and to tell a story. You have a ‘people following’ and regular readers that look for what you have to say.

    Most of us write for the hungry search engines and the methods talked about here are for those people trying to get their foot in the door. You should enjoy micro niche finder, it is used here every day. Now couple some modern tweaking to your keyword placement we shall see your readership increase!

    Thanks for visiting and come see us again at linkmoney.org
    Rich

  • Although making money from my blog has never been my primary aim (blogging is a very cheap hobby!) like everyone else I want many readers. I’ve gradually realised the importance of keywords, but must admit I’m still a bit haphazard. I bought market samurai a few months back, which seems great, but it comes back to putting aside the time to use it properly!

  • Hi David,

    That is a perfect example of what you can do with keywords. It does not have to be about making the buck, though that is what the majority are trying to do, but to just gradually increase your readership with a few well placed search engine traps will sure help. As with any tools or methods that will help, they won’t work sitting in the box. This is hard work.
    Thank you for the comment.
    Rich

  • I keep ranting about keywords as well, Rich.

    This is the crucial step but so many bloggers just don’t realize. They target far too competitive keywords or keywords which attract no searches.

    Get the keywords cracked and you are well on your way but it does take hard work and commitment (oh and relationship building).

    Andrew

  • Rich, great story you have there and I liked how you shared the story and method behind the 3rd party blog business… that outsourcing part truly intrigued me.

    I personally use Micro Niche Finder as well. I think it’s great, and it’s best at getting away from markets (or keywords) that suck. In competitive markets it can be time consuming to find good keywords, but at least you’ll know what not to use, or know just how much competition you’re facing if you choose certain words.

  • Keyword research… the thing I suck at the most yet need to do in order to have a successfully monetized blog. Alas, that might be why I’m doomed to work a day job for the rest of my life!

  • Phil:

    Hi Rich,

    interesting article. Usually I try to use a lot of these tools but over time I have been fooled here and there as well.

    I am currently using Market Samurai. If you know this piece of software – whcih from my perspective does similar things – can you maybe explain the differences between those two?

  • Antti,

    Nice to hear from you. Glad you liked the rant and must say that the 3rd party blog business is an untapped market that is just yearning for more such companies as ours. That may sound unusual for someone to encourage competition, but here is the way I look at it. Its all about the buzz. Most businesses have no idea that there is any such service comapny available and they look at business blogging as a pain in the butt for them. The way we do it they do not have to do anything other than supply us with ideas and we do all the work from then on. I welcome new competition.
    Micronichefinder has been a big help to me and exactly for what you say. The keywords that you might think would work might not and sometimes it will show you a good one to use that you would have never thought of.
    Thanks for the comment.
    Rich

  • Well said Andrew. The keywords you think, might be just the wrong ones to use. A good keyword research tool will help make some serious decisions for you.
    Relationships can sure help in the ever important backlink process as well.
    Thanks for commenting.
    Rich

  • Hi Phil,

    I have no experience with Market Samurai but will look into the features they advertise and will post another comment here later.
    Thanks for asking.
    Rich

  • Hey Brian, don’t lose your point of aim. Try to give yourself an hour or so every day to build a good list of keywords and investigate the competition and even most important is to determine the commercial intent.
    There are keywords that might bring general curious traffic, but then there are keywords that are searched for by people that are looking to make a purcahse. Those are golden.

    Thanks for leaving a comment.
    Rich

  • I love that picture of your dad! Every time I see that photo attached to one of your tweets, I burst out laughing. What a delightful sense of humor! Charles Atlas – lol!

    I’m very curious about your 3rd party blogging idea. I’m looking forward to chatting with you more about it.

  • Thanks Rich for all the important information. Sometimes it is hard to grasp all the information that is needed to make a blog successful, but I’m getting there little at a time. I really appreciate knowing about all the learning tools that are out there. After all learning is part of staying happy.
    Thanks again,
    Debbie

  • Cheryl,
    Thanks for mentioning my Pop. He sure was my all time hero. That particular view of him was when he was single-handedly digging the cellar for our little house that he was building. He used a pick and shovel and a wheel barrow to bring the dirt and shale up out of the hole. They don’t make em like that anymore.

    I’ll be happy to talk to you about some of our 3rd party blog projects. One that I am super thrilled with is http://www.AfricanMusicBlog.com that shot right to a GPR-4 in two months!

    We now have many very satisfied clients and ongoing projects. It really is a “J-O-B” (gee I even hate to spell it out.) :)

    Hey thanks again and glad you came to visit.
    All the best.
    Rich

  • Hi Debbie, the happy one!

    All of this information was gleaned over time from other sources and I thank them all the time, so your good wishes are welcome.
    Thanks so much for the nice comment.
    Rich

  • Lisa:

    Hi Rich:

    Wow! — your article really hit home with me. I am not technical in the sense that I do not understand how to do website publishing. I find it to be such a hinderence in my ability to have and grow a blog. I know many other people share my frustration. I want to learn, but am not sure where to start.

    Recently, I made quite an investment in a blogging class, but couldn’t really get much out of it, because I cannot do the nescessary programming to produce a webpage or website. I have lots of ideas for good content, but that doesn’t really matter since I can’t produce a good webpage.

    The techinical knowledge to create a blog and have the blog be picked up by search engine’s etc, is just beyond me at this point. For example, I have no idea what a “feed” is. Do I need one for my blog? Also, that little button at the top of your article that allows people to “re-tweet.” I haven’t a clue how to put that on my blog. Those are just two examples of about a zillion things I have no technical ability to understand or create.

    Is WordPress intuitive? Is there any step by step trainnig in WordPress that you would recommend? I am sure I could learn if I had a good reference to learn from — I am just not sure where to start. Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

    Thanks for the great article! It’s snowing buckets here in CT today. I am going to spend the day reading your blog, and learning as much as I can.

  • Holy smoke methinks we struck a nerve! LOL

    Hey Lisa, your blog looks good and I see it is on Blogger, that’s ok, but there are a great many more features available with WordPress. There are plugins and widgets to do just about anything at all that you can think of. I was on Blogger for about six or seven years before I heard about WordPress and set up my first site. I now have hundreds, perhaps more and many of them are just small little niche marketing blogs that once built i never go back to again and once in a while they kick off a few bucks in advertising.

    My most popular and longest running blog was about genealogy and after I had learned to use WP decided to transfer my blogger site over to WordPress and was real nervous about it. No reason to be as it turned out. It literally was a one button transfer and all of the dat came right in and was all set up with just a couple of keystrokes. The only think I had to clean up were some of the tags and categories, but chances are there is an easy way to do that too. I just did it manually. Believe me I am NOT a coder. It is all black magic to me, but just learn to use the tools and it really is a cinch.

    The retweet button is a plugin. all you have to do is click to install it and then activate it and set the format to have it show up on the post where you want it. You plu in your Twitter login code and that’s all thee is to it. When people think your post is cool they retweet it, and you get seen by their followers.

    I learned three years ago by downloading a free ebook at caroline-middleborook.com and it probably still is available but there have been hundreds of changes in WP since then and none of the illustrations would mean much to you. I also have, or had, a batch of WP How to videos, but I might have lost them in a recent computer calamity. I’ll see if I can locate them for you.

    Man am I glad you are keeping your buckets full. we usually get clobbered here on Walton’s Mountain in Upstate New York, but so far we seem to be avoiding your problems. You can have my share. I’m thinking palm trees would look nice right now. Talk about cabin fever…

    Oh one last thought about the benefits of your own self hosted blog. If you make a real goofy mistake, no one can take your blog away from you. You can always retract or fix any problem. With Google owned sites like Blogger if you do something even accidentally, against their TOS, they can just shut it down permanently.

    I’ll search around for those WP tutorials for you and get back to you later.

    Really appreciate your lovely missile.

    All the best.
    Rich

  • A feed means an RSS feed, which stands for Really simple syndication, which you do not need to know, but will make you sound very techie if you throw it around at a party. What it means is that every time you make a post the feed is sent out to anyone or any feed aggregator site that sends it into peoples news reader programs. There are tons of readers and I use the Google one, most all are free and it is a good way to subscribe to your favorite blogs that you want to keep track of. Once a day you get their feed in your reader.
    Pretty simple really.

  • Lisa, I just did a Google search and there are dozens of places that have Free WordPress Tutorial Videos.
    Probably could go to YouTube and search and fine even more.
    Hope this helps.

  • Lisa:

    Thanks so much, Rich! I am going to give WordPress a go — first I am going to spend some serious time trying to learn how it works!

  • Great Lisa!

    Let us know how it goes!

    Rich

  • Joel:

    Great info Rich, I didn’t even know such a service as 3rd Party Blog existed, so congrats with that. Like many before me I pay far too little attention to keywords and write what I want, but you’re right, they are very important and a lot of time should be spent on them. Thanks!

  • Hi Joel,
    Glad you liked the info.
    Well if a writer is good and has a following, many keywords will just come natural. Myself I would recommend making sure that the keywords would have a good chance of helping.
    Thanks for the comment.
    Rich

  • Keywords! they seem to be one of the big tickets to pulling readers in. I can see I need to do more research, and especially finding ones with commercial intent. Good information. Thanks.

  • I would argue that you do not actually make money blogging, but my leveraging the power of blogging to sell products and services (they don’t have to be yours).

    Some great tips in there though.

  • Hi Teagan,
    Ultimately it is all about “traffic”. In order to get your fair share of the pie, you need good content and a hell of a lot of backlinks.
    Thanks for the nice comment.
    Rich

  • Hey Robb,
    Well content + backlinks = traffic, so whether it is a blog or a static site selling widgets, you still need traffic. Blogs are dynamic and content changes all the time so they should be attractive to the search engines. Put the perfect type of ad on a blog and it will make you money.
    Thanks for visiting, don’t be a stranger.
    Rich

  • This is my first visit to your blog Rich and I must say I’ve enjoyed myself. A very well written article here with fantastic points. It’s amazing how many ways there are to earn money online. One of the best seems to be doing for businesses what they should be doing for themselves.

    I used to provide SEO services to my web design clients. I even did a little article marketing for them. Unfortunately, I hated both activities – I preferred working on my own projects and ended up feeling like an employee most of the time. But those jobs were quite lucrative. Businesses are willing to invest in Internet marketing – if someone else can do the work for them :) .

    I look forward to your next post!

  • Hey Keller,

    My what an excellent comment to receive!
    So glad you found my blog and the door is always open.
    Some might think me stupid for giving away my 3rd Party Blog ideas but you hit the nail on the head, most businesses have no idea this type of service exists. Of course they need a company blog, every business does, but who’s going to operate it? Well I will for one, and it would be nice if more bloggers got in this business. Get the buzz going.
    Hey if you are waiting for my next post, you will probably enjoy my most recent.
    All the best.
    Rich

  • Thanks for the article, Rich. I went through a period when I tried to pay attention to keywords, and used Wordtracker, etc. But it drove me batty, and took all the fun out of it for me. I’m glad it works for you, but it’s not for me. It was too much like math.

  • Ha, that’s funny Jeff.

    It sort of depends on your goals. Some blogs just don’t need it, but if you are an internet marketer it is a must.
    You can always outsource it. There are people in the Philippine Islands and India that will do this sort of thing for you at a very reasonable price. They work good and honest too.

    If you ever want any suggestions about outsourcing, send me an email.
    Rich

  • Thanks for the recommendation, Rich.

    Keyword research is indeed the very first step when it comes to writing article, creating PPC campaign and starting a niche site.

  • Hi Raymond, you are certainly welcome and it is nice that others appreciate this.
    All the best.
    Rich

  • Starting and making money with blogs…? Can a blogbe on more than one subject? I have a lot of different subjects I want to write about (such as computers, movie and music reviews, comic books, TV shows, celebrities, etc.

  • I appreciate how you discussed the different types of keywords. Some people just think that all keywords are created equal and the number of monthly searches is what counts but keywords can also represent the different stages of the buying process. Broad general keywords like “make money online” are not the same as “Buy affiliate money making system.” A good keyword is one that is long-tail and represents “buyer intention.” By the way the picture of your dad is pretty cool :) was that taken during the great depression era by chance? Just wondering.

  • Very good also. Money Words are what you need. There are free tools for determining commercial intent and they will hep you make your decisions of keywords to go after.

    I think that picture was taken in the late 40′s. My favorite.

  • freelance translation jobs:

    If you want to make serious money from blogging, you must have complete control over your blog and that’s something the free blogging accounts won’t give you. You’ll be bound by their terms and conditions and that usually includes not being able to actively promote anything. There are plenty of people who have established a blog only to have it removed without notice some weeks or months later.

  • Hi Mildred,

    Watch for a future post about how to make serious money online. Coming soon.

    Thanks for the nice comments.
    Rich

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