This is a guest post by Brandon Connell who’s blog you can find at http://www.BrandonConnell.com

Creating a blog with the intention of generating a regular income is a noble task. When you start out with a marketing budget of zero, that task is more difficult than working a regular full time job. Actually turning a profit on such a blog takes time, and you must work with that intention from the beginning.

Your biggest asset from the start is wordpress because it has a wide variety of search engine friendly themes and free plugins at your instant disposal. You can easily find a free php hosting account through google that allows ftp access and sometimes c-panel. Having this type of hosting will allow you to easily upload new plugins, and additional stats tracking called webalizer within c-panel itself.

Once you have your blog installed and ready, you need to choose a design that allows widgets, and has ad slots in it. I recommend using a plugin called MyAdManager which will allow you to accept paypal payments, and instantly publishes advertisers upon receiving payment. When your blog gets popular, you can just sit back and collect the revenue without having to manage any of the ecommerce aspects.

Additional plugins you will need for seo, stats tracking, and expanding your functionality are:

• AddToAny: Subscribe Button - Help readers subscribe to your blog using any feed reader or feed service.
• Akismet - Comes with the wordpress install but requires an api code to work. This protects your blog against spam.
• All in One SEO Pack - Out-of-the-box SEO for your WordPress blog.
• CommentLuv - Plugin to show a link to the last post from the commenters blog by parsing the feed at their given URL when they leave a comment. Rewards your readers and encourage more comments.
• flickrRSS - Allows you to integrate the photos from a flickr rss feed into your site.
• Follow My Links - Do not automatically add the rel=nofollow attribute to links in comments by the post author, strip nofollow from links to the post author’s web page. This encourages blog comments.
• Global Translator - Automatically translates a blog in 48 different languages. Brings in traffic from other countries and non-native speakers.
• Google Analytics for WordPress - This plugin makes it simple to add Google Analytics with extra search engines and automatic clickout and download tracking to your WordPress blog.
• Google Sitemaps - This generator will create a Google compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• BM KeywordLinks - A SEO plugin that helps you to automatically link keywords to articles.
• LiveJournal Crossposter Remix - Automatically copies all posts to a LiveJournal or other LiveJournal-based blog.
• MyAdManager – Manages 125×125 ads automatically. Also allows the ability to add new ads and make them live on the confirmation of payment from paypal.
• Newsletter - Newsletter is a cool plugin to create your own subscriber list, to send newsletters, to build your business.
• nStatistics - This plugin generate complex blog statistics for users and robots.
• Please Link 2 Me - This plugin adds a text box containing all the code necessary for visitors to easily create links back to your article from their website.
• SEO Friendly Images - Automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes them W3C/xHTML valid as well.
• Smart Youtube - Insert YouTube videos in posts, comments and RSS feeds with ease and full customization.
• Static Toolbar - Static Toolbar displays a static toolbar in the bottom of the page, like the facebook’s one. The toolbar may contain last posts, rss feed, search engine, social network and sharing links.
• WP-Sticky - Adds a sticky post feature to your WordPress’s blog.
• WP-UserOnline - Enable you to display how many users are online on your WordPress blog with detailed statistics of where they are and who there are(Members/Guests/Search Bots).
• WP to Twitter - Updates Twitter when you create a new blog post or add to your blogroll using Cli.gs. With a Cli.gs API key, creates a clig in your Cli.gs account with the name of your post as the title.

These are some of the plugins that I include on all of my blogs. They provide advanced functionality that allows me to build and maintain traffic, as well as enhance the media capabilities of my blog. Making your blog generate an income is more than adding a few plugins though.

Blog marketing is a huge deal, and something you must do on a daily basis if you are taking your blog seriously. I understand that it is discouraging to run a blog and post daily for months without making an income, but you are using that time to build a foundation for success. Persistence is what pays off, and you cannot lose sight of that. Keep in mind that while you cannot see an immediate income, things are going on that you cannot see which will make your blog a huge success if you just keep going with the routine.

Key blog marketing techniques include commenting on other blogs and including your link in the url field. Actually take part in the blog’s conversation and avoid spamming. Assume that the blog owner will notice spam right off the bat and delete it immediately, so it was a waste of your time to do so in the first place.

Forums are also a great way to generate some traffic and build links. Forums usually let you include your link in your signature. Your signature appears beneath every single forum post you make. Because the link is included in your signature, you don’t have to post it in your actual post because it will look like spam.

One of your biggest traffic sources will come from guest posting on other blogs. If you post a quality article on another blog which has traffic, you will bring in a new group of readers to your own blog. You can easily find blogs to guest post on by doing a google search for “guest blogging”. There are forums, social networks, and other sites dedicated to guest bloggers. This article you are reading now is a guest post, and I wrote this article specifically for this blog.

You can generate even more traffic by writing articles and posting them on article publishing websites. You can find a ton of such sites by doing a google search for “free article publishing”. You will establish yourself as an expert this way, and those kinds of websites always get good rankings in search engines. Some of them even allow re-publishing and any webmaster that does so is required to maintain a link to the authors website in order to use the article. This will help you build one-way links to your blog and increase your Google PageRank.

If your website is also in place to generate service business, you can publish press releases on free press release websites.

There are lots of free marketing methods available on the internet today, and it just takes a little research to find them. Start now by looking at what you have already done, and how you can improve upon it with the tips I provided. Don’t forget to stop by my blog for a free newsletter, and lots more tips.

Affiliate marketing is not just a profitable business anyone looking to work from home can do. Now, most of us don’t even give it a thought (due to our mindsets, if nothing else) about the other side of affiliate marketing– to be a merchant. So, if you were blogging like so many other bloggers, how could you possibly run an affiliate marketing program? You don’t really have a product or service to market, do you?

Actually, you do. All you have to do is to think about it a bit more creatively than just setting up blogs and promoting traffic in the hopes that you will strike gold.

Ideas On How To Find Your Niche and How to Create Products

Bookstores: Just walk into any book store and you are likely to find books categorized and put up on display in a systematic manner. All you have to do is to look at any of these categories — the narrower the topic is, the better — and pick one to write about for at least another year. Pick some books up to help you get started on the “great content” drive. Perhaps, one of those little books could be used as “research already done” for you to develop a small free report for your site.

Amazon Racks: If you think you don’t have the time to actually walk into a book store, you could perhaps just visit amazon.com and start your niche research from there. Surf through almost all pages and dedicate time to pick out the categories or topics that seem to have some sort of commercial value. Usually, Amazon wouldn’t bother having a category there that isn’t making money for it. This method should be even quicker for you since it’s all online. Purchase tapes, DVDs, books or anything else you might find on your niche to start with.

Magazines: Need yet another source for niche research? Visit magazines.com. This should make for a great additional niche research resource for you. If there is a magazine on any topic whatsoever ( even if you don’t find the topic of your niche attractive), it is a niche which has considerable interest. Browse through the categories and drill down and across to find the topic/niche you are most comfortable with.

Creating Your Own Product

If you are blogging on a topic, it is worth writing a free report on and then make an ebook out of it. Since we are talking about “Being the merchant” here, you are now approaching this from the other side. There are just two ways of developing your product:

Write yourself: If you have good writing and research skills, it makes sense for you to spend some time each day — no matter what you do and then develop the product yourself. It will take some time and patience but it is surely worth it since you will save huge amounts of money you could probably spend on generating traffic or other aspects related to your business.

Outsource to a professional ghostwriter: If writing is an effort for you or if you just don’t have the time to do it, it makes sense to have a professional ghost writer do it for you. In a strict business point of view, it makes perfect sense to do so. A professional ghost writer is usually the best choice for projects they would have written plenty of ebooks. They usually have a systematic approach to writing ebooks and some of them even present them very well.

Establish an Affiliate program

First and foremost, I am a blogger and then an entrepreneur. When I saw it all from the “merchant” point of view, I could immediately place my finger on the potential of an affiliate program. Imagine thousands of people trying to sell your products and services. I immediately set my website up.My  portfolio website Fetchprofits now holds my portfolio and also an affiliate program. How did I do that?

• Use Plimus: This was my first port of call even though I did hear about the other three affiliate management programs. I liked Plimus because It was incredibly easy to set up my affiliate program. Within a couple of days of my affiliate program going live, I had someone sign up as an affiliate. That was incredible. My sales force is now growing — one affiliate at a time.
• e-junkie: I heard about e-junkie much before I heard about plimus. I wasn’t sure if I could sell services through it but I didn’t bother trying. On the other hand, I know a lot of my online entrepreneurs who started out with e-junkie and are doing quite well.
• Clickbank: I don’t think I need to tell you anything about clickbank.com at all? Just in case anyone reading this now didn’t know, it is a leading online marketplace for all things digital – mostly ebooks and software. Yet again, I didn’t if I could sell packaged services and also it takes money to get started. I gave it a skip. If you have software or an information product to sell, clickbank is still an amazing choice.

Promote Your Affiliate Program

• Promote through your blog: Naturally, this should be your first stop. Put up a sticky post on your blog like I did about my affiliate program. Talk about it endlessly. Link back to it. Don’t just say “Check out my new affiliate program”. Try to put out the numbers there for potential affiliates to think about when they decide to join you.
• Join abestweb: I know I did talk about Abestweb a long time ago; it is still the best place to go and talk about affiliate marketing. Not to mention, you also get to learn a lot and stumble across new affiliate programs as they come. Most importantly,think about loads of traffic from here alone. If you have a good affiliate program and a good commission, you will have affiliates for you in no time. However, they are änal-retentive” about their rules on the forum. Tread with care.

Do you have your affiliate program up and running yet? Why can’t bloggers also provide blogging services to so many others who can’t blog but do want to make money?

I was doing a quick weekend reading and I couldn’t help but notice this post on How Ingela Johansson makes about $300 a month in passive income. What was more intriguing than anything was that she succeeded in doing it all through “Article Marketing” and nothing else. She claims to have written over 800 odd articles in roughly six months and counting. That’s impressive, isn’t it? As usual, I set off thinking how I could apply this to blogging? Could a blogger profit from doing affiliate marketing? Pat came the answer from within — it should work. Here’s what you should keep in mind before you set out:

A few articles a day is all it takes: Ingela believes in it. She did it. So can you. In fact, she claims that she isn’t even as good as most of us are when it comes to writing articles. Also, it took her considerable time and effort to overcome what I would like to call “Article writing paralysis”. Ultimately, what does it take to reach the number of articles that should help bring in consistent traffic over time? Just a few articles a day. Set a goal, write short, snappy articles. Write and submit. Don’t ever look back again.

Stop writing trash to meet volumes: Often, I see that a lot of people who use affiliate marketing barely have any conversions (as in, number of people clicking through the article’s resource box to visit the marketer’s site). I went in and checked their articles out. Most of them suck outright. As far as article marketing is concerned, quality always reigns. When I first started out by doing freelance writing and I was often asked to “dumb down my vocabulary” and “not reveal too much within the article”. To an extent , it’s fine. But there still ought to be quality. The article should provide some fresh insight or information.

Use copywriting all over: Article writing doesn’t mean you are writing for “text books”. You are still writing with an intent — there is still a need for your readers to take some action and in this case it will be to click through to check your link out. That’s the reason why you will need to master the art of writing copy. You will have to use this skill of copywriting especially in your resource box, while writing the article with a dash of personality.

Have you been doing article marketing for your blogs? Does it work? Are the dynamics different when you promote a blog instead of a squeeze page or a landing page? Please post your results here for a quick review of article marketing for bloggers.

You know what I was thinking the other day? I thought that maybe a time will come when no one would want to read blogs anymore. It’s all text and video, for heaven’s sake. I knew that we, at Blogging Elements, are not doing anything  interesting to get the juice going, but at least Mike and I are thinking. One of those usual, mad-and-almost-idiotic-brainstorming-over-coffee-and-skype thing,  we threw a lot of those ideas at the wall and some of them really stood out. Here are some of them:

Go out and shake hands with readers very near to you geographically: Did you ever think this could be possible? I think there is a plug-in somewhere that tells you who is coming to your blog and from where. If you could spot a few readers coming in from the place where you are blogging from, why not take the effort, go that extra mile and meet them in person? Can you imagine the tremendous boost in your network? For the record, they will never be able to forget what you did.

Surprise the heck out of your readers: Can you think of some interesting ways to surprise the heck out of them? I thought of the following: Send out an email out of the blue to them and thank them for being a reader for so long. Send them gifts – almost any gift will do. Send them plaques with their names etched on it.  Call them and talk to them. Tell them, “ Hi. This is [your name], I own myblogname.com. I just wanted to call you and say hello. Also, I would like to thank you for being there and reading my blog. I really appreciate it.” Crazy stuff, this one!

Send money, just like that: I still remember this one time when someone I happened to speak with in a forum (I think it was DigitalPoint) sent me a dollar – just like that and that was over 7 years ago and see how I still remember it? I couldn’t believe it when I actually got a mail saying “You got money” and see an incredible, larger-than-life dollar sitting there, as cute as a coin.

Did you try anything out of the ordinary? What is your take on going over-board when it comes to making  your blog or you unforgettable?

As bloggers, we are usually online and rarely venture out to seek radically different approaches to blog promotion. I was just thinking about the vast opportunities that are available for  bloggers to promote  their blog and three options immediately sprang to life.

Promotions or advertisements of any kind are most effective when they receive as many eye-balls as they can; it’s even better when audiences have all the time in the world and do nothing but think about what you have to say while looking at your promotions. Based on that line of thought, here are some awesome ideas for offline blog promotion:

Meet Your Potential Readers at The Airport

At the time of writing this, I am presently flying to Bangkok as a part of my experiments with location independent living. Due to flight-hopping, I end up waiting for a rather long time for my next flight out. Sitting here with the laptop, mid-way into my journey, I couldn’t help but notice the sheer gloom, utter boredom and really long waiting times most of the travelers endure. Surprisingly, none of the advertising spaces are being used.

Even when used, the copy used isn’t effective. I was thinking about what copy I could use to attract people to visit bloggingelements and here some of the ideas that came up.

“ You Could Be Blogging Instead of Waiting and Doing Nothing”

“ Why Don’t You Make Some Money By Blogging While Waiting For Flights?”

“ We Think You Should Let the World Know about Your Travels”

I am not a copywriter, but you get the idea, don’t you? Maybe you could extend this idea to train stations too!

Hospitals and Clinics: I remember waiting for a marathon 2 hours before I got to see a doctor when I contracted flu a few months ago. While people are waiting there for their turn to mee the doctor, I noticed that they are in a reflective mood. They sit there and think about their present condition and why it must have occurred. Perhaps they would be making resolutions about having a healthier diet or do a stringent exercise regimen. If you a blog in the health, diet and nutrition niche, don’t you think your pitch here would be powerful?

“ Find Miracle Cures for Diseases So That You Don’t Have To Come Here Again”

“ If Only You Knew Better, You Wouldn’t Be Here”

I am looking forward to try them out myself. I thought I should share that with you  here to get your point of view. What do you think? Do you have any more ideas you could share?

If you don’t already have a blog here is our easy three step plan to getting a blog set up

A whitepaper is a well-written, often persuasive document– usually technical, but not necessarily so — which can be written to give clarity on how a particular product or service is poised to solve problems for customers  or anything else for that matter.

Although a whitepaper is opinionated, it isn’t like other pieces of writing where authors just rattle about whatever it is they wanted to say. Instead, a whitepaper is usually full of hard facts and solid justification of the point the author has to make.

Recently, I was about to structure and write a whitepaper for a client and I discovered that bloggers don’t ever care to have a whitepaper available as a ready download on their respective blogs.

I think a whitepaper would make for an excellent addition to your blog because it would present a point of view clearly, succintly, with facts to back it all up. Most importantly, a whitepaper could be the best sales person you ever had on your virtual staff and it could help you build your list which is the holy grail of internet marketing.

Traditionally, whitepapers have always been used for technological products and services, but actually it could be used for any kind of products or services extending all the way to providing information for profit — which we intend to do as bloggers.

Although the publication of your first whitepaper might not exactly “glittering”, the purpose can still be met. What do you think?

One of the maxims of getting rich is to learn how to give first. It might be counter intuitive but it is a secret very few people know. Acts of altruism could be profitable too. But how can a blogger benefit from that? How can a blogger do more, get more, earn more by just giving away? Here is  what I thougt could make things happen:

• Comment generously: I know that it has been said a lot of times and you might even get sick if you  hear it again. However, here’s the twist: you don’t comment because it is well known that it could be a healthy source of traffic for you; you comment because you genuinely wanted to share your point of view.
• Link to other bloggers: One of the most obvious benefits of blogging has always been the ability to link easily and generously to other bloggers whenever you talk about them or when you talk about something they said. When you start linking selflessly without a care and without expecting anything back, you are on your way to profitable blogging.
• Promote others or sing praises: We humans are vain and we would love to have someone sing praises for us. In ancient India, emperors used to have people on retainer just to write elaborate poetry or sing hymns in praise of  those emperors. Why not do that on your blog? Why not pick someone and sing praises. Of course don’t expect anything back. You could recommend others or perhaps promote their business or something they are doing.

Learning to give not only allows you to experience a great feeling of joy and peace but it can indirectly get you name, fame, wealth and fortune. What do you think?

It is very much probable to see high-traffic days when your website is found at the very top of “Organic Listings”. A precious backlink,one at a time, will get you an awesome chain of backlinks, which will definitely bind you securely right at the top of SERPs. It sounds easy but it is not that simple until you get the hang of it. Here are 4 simple tips to ensure your SERP (search engine ranking position):

1. Guest Posts

If you are a good writer, which you must be if you are blogging, then backlinking becomes easy. All you need is a flair to write and a willingness to do it.It is as simple as that. You can write guest posts for niche blogs for which the reader shall bless you as he benefits too. He gets a well-deserved rest, an informative post and you get a well-earned backlink.Of course the readers get fresh blood, another opinion and another point-of-view.

2. Submit articles

Another option is to go the sites that allow you to post a blog with a backlink like GoArticles.com and EzineArticles.com. This has the stamp of authority and you can be assured that the backlink is welcome. You have the additional advantage of being able to use the same article on some other sites as well. If you are smart you can make some quick changes and make them unique and post them wherever you wish to. The more you write and submit the more backlinks you will have.

3. Pay for backlinks

Everyone is not happy paying for the backlinks but it is one of the most assured ways to get ‘votes’ for your blog. This is what matters at the end of the day and this is what we blog for. But do be careful. Google is wary of such strategies and is quick to catch on and you might not benefit in the end. Search engines do not take kindly to people gaming their algorithm. Anyway if you are careful this is a powerful tool to enhance your page rank.

4. Social Bookmarking sites

Bookmarking your sites may not be very popular but it sure does pay. Of course it depends which sites you bookmark with, if they are good quality you can reap their benefits too. The search engines can’t forget your presence and you are noticed even when fast indexing is done.

Play it smart and the smartness will show in your Google page ranking.

It is now more than necessary to stand out in the ever-crowding blogosphere. There has to  be something about your blog that should make your readers crave for more, come tearing bandwidths onto your blog and visit you often. You need satisfied customers and let’s see how exactly we will be able to do it with your blog and a little bit of creativity:

1. Give Something away with each post: Now, you have heard of giving away free reports and free e-courses depending on your niche but you do that using a simple opt-in form, don’t you? I would say that you must give something away with each post — be it a link to some other website that has some goodies for you, a free giveaway public-domain book, a rare report, a popular classic, a bit of information that is not even known. You get the drift, don’t you? While you are at it, ask them to subscribe to your blog to make the process complete and allow them to download anything you are giving away. This way you will build a mailing list.

2. Use Your Auto-responder follow-up messages: After you take your readers’ email addresses, you would send them whatever you had promised them. After that, you will have to send out follow-up messages. You should be sending them informative emails that has even more juice about the niche your website operates in for the reader to learn and enjoy. While you are sending out emails, ensure that you have some links back to your blog so that they need to come back to your blog to read even more information about the topic the follow-up message was on.

3. Have an affiliate program for your Blog: Have  you thought about it? Ever? We have merchants  running affiliate programs and we have people selling e-books and informational products or even membership sites who pay their affiliates handsomely for any referrels. Why not do that with blogs? You don’t have to do it the “click-bank” way, but just put up a page on your blog that talks about the affiliate program and let the readers do all the work of promoting your blog for you.

4. Train and Lead: One of my favorites has always been the Integration of Online businesses with either an offline business or some other off line activity. If you can be enterprising enough, you could do carpet bombing locally, gather people around, announce that you would teach them how to start blogging and make some money or make money online using one of the many ways. After that, you may ask them to visit yourblog.com and sign-up so that you could keep in touch with them.

While most bloggers struggle with building, running and maintaining a single blog, there are many others who run multiple blogs, across different niches which seems to make some sense in a way.Here are reasons why I think owning multiple blogs is an amazing way to reap the maximum benefit off the whole process of blogging:

1. The Pareto’s Principle: Also known as the 80/20 rule, when you have more than one blog, chances are that 20% of your blogs could bring in 80% of revenue to you while 80% of your blogs might not. Those that don’t earn you much can be sold or overhauled. If you just had one blog and that one blog did not earn much money, you would be in trouble, wouldn’t you?

2. Experience is priceless: Let’s admit it, the whole process of doing niche research for each of your blogs and then actually setting up your blogs, installing them, finding and optimizing the right theme for your blog followed by writing content and monetizing them all is an experience that would be priceless. You would really become an expert in setting-up and running wordpress blogs and that is, in itself, more precious than any monetary benefit you might accrue from all those blogs.

3. It’s a number’s game: The more blogs you have, the more leverage you get. You literally build an empire of blogs which work together to bring you income. Let’s say you use adsense for all of these blogs and let’s assume that each blog fetches you about $100 per month. Just the fact that you have 10 blogs across various niches would get you a cool $1000 per month recurring.

What do you think? Do you think you should stay focused on one blog or spread your wings and then build an empire of blogs each working in its own niche to its fullest potential.