Blogging is a great way to make an income, and to have fun while doing it!

People often ask how much you can earn from your blog, and the answer is very difficult to quantify. But as a rough guide I would suggest that for every 1000 visitors to your site you will be able to make somewhere between $10 and $20. It depends on your niche and how well written your blog is of course, but this seems a decent enough figure. Therefore if you build a blog that receives a couple of thousand hits per day then you can have a very nice extra income.

However the potential for your blog is MASSIVE...there is a huge amount of traffic out there. The estimated number of searches per month is currently in the region of 70 Billion. Every month! Just imagine what you could do with just a tiny fraction of that traffic. And this traffic is growing.

When writing your blog make sure your overall standard of English is pretty good, it doesn't have to be perfect, and the odd mistake actually makes it look more human, but a blog that is littered with errors becomes difficult to read.

Also you will need a good understanding of your blog topic. I have found that as you write and research about your chosen subject then your knowledge grows rapidly anyway.

Step 1: Choose a Blog Topic.

This is one of the most crucial decisions a blogger has to make.
Choose a blog topic about which you have above average knowledge or above average interest.
Choose a blog topic within your area of interest that is fairly general. So if you were interested in Tornadoes and thunderstorms, you would write your blog about the weather in general, then you have a larger target audience and greater potential web traffic and sales.

Step 2: Choose a domain name.
Unless you are developing a specific brand I would suggest that you choose a domain name with your topic of interest in it. For example a blog about the weather could be http://www.weatherandstorms.com/ .

It can be quite tricky to find a domain name that hasn't been taken already, but play around with it and finally settle on something you are comfortable with. Add a hyphen, or make it a phrase, but most of all it should be easy to spell and easy to remember!

If you go to http://www.blogger.com/www.godaddy.com%20 you can search for domain here. Email me if you have any more specific questions on this point.

STEP 3: Purchase the domain and hosting.

OK, you will now need to go to Hostgator and sign up for hosting. From the Hostgator home page click on the Hosting 'order now' button (top left). The basic package here is $4.95 per month which is great, but if you want to host more than one blog then it is very easy to upgrade to the unlimited domain hosting ($7.95 - very, VERY cheap!). Now you will be taken to the next page.

Here enter the domain that you have chosen earlier, without the 'www' prefix and hit enter, then you will be taken to the next screen.
You will be given a choice of check boxes for different possible domain extension (.com, .net, .org etc), so check the one you prefer. I always, if possible, go for the '.com' if it is available. If a particular extension isn't available then it will be marked as 'Registered' on this screen.

When you hit 'continue' you will be taken through a series of steps to complete the payment process.

It can take 24 hours or so for the domain to be registered, so I will continue with the next part of the process, the blog setup, in the next lesson.

In the meantime feel free to email me with any questions you may have.


Take care and speak soon

Mark
mark@blogyourworld.com
http://www.blogyourworld.com/