Blogging Archives - Jason Brubaker

15 Steps to Start Blogging (So You Can Start Living)

April 6, 2020 by Jason Brubaker

If you’re ready to start blogging, you’re in the right place. Simply put, blogging involves setting up a site, adding content, attracting visitors, gaining subscribers, selling stuff and scaling up. While that might sound simple, growing a blog into a real business takes time. In order to succeed, you’ll need to develop the discipline to keep going even when it feels like you’re not making progress.

To help you start your blog, I’ve distilled over a decade of my personal blogging experience into a 15 step checklist. These are the same fundamental steps I employ with every project. Hopefully this info will help you avoid my mistakes and accelerate your success.

start blogging

How To Start Blogging

Here is a general overview of steps you can take to start and grow your blog. Keep in mind that some of these steps can be accomplished today, while other steps may take months. Regardless, the best time to start blogging is right now!

Where it makes sense, I included recommendations for helpful software, products and services. In full disclosure, if you click the links and make a purchase, I may receive compensation. (This is called affiliate marketing. And adding affiliate links to your own blog is one of the ways you can make make money online.) If referrals aren’t cool, feel free to ignore the links.

1. Pick Your Overarching Blog Topic: Many people choose a blog topic based on popular trends and not passion. Don’t do this. It may take you many months to grow your blog. And if you don’t love your topic, you won’t be able to fully serve your niche audience. To avoid burnout before you start, choose a blog topic you love.

2. Break Your Blog Topic Into Categories: Once you find your blog topic, your next step is to break your topic into smaller chunks. For example, filmmaking consists of screenwriting, producing, directing, marketing and distribution. By breaking your own niche topic into smaller categories, you will define a framework for your overarching topic. I recommend creating at least five categories.

3. Create 10 Articles For Each Category: After breaking your niche into smaller categories, create at least ten article ideas for each category. This simple exercise will allow you to come up with at least fifty article ideas. Fifty articles will provide you with two articles per week, for the next six months.

4. Choose Blog Platform: Many blogging networks allow you to post blog content for free. But if you’re serious about blogging, I suggest you forgo the free stuff in favor of a blog you own. To do this, you’ll need hosting and a domain name. One company I’ve used (and promote as affiliate) is Bluehost. The hosting packages usually include a domain.

5. Set Up Traffic Tools: One of the most comprehensive traffic tools is called Google Analytics. The software is free, easy to install and allows you to monitor who’s coming to your website, how long they stay in where visitors exit.

6. Create Your Facebook Account: In order to provide community, at the very least you will want to set up a Facebook page that links to your blog. This page will allow you to interact and build relationships with your audience. Set up a Facebook page here.

7. Create A Twitter Account: One of the easiest ways to get visitors to your blog is to set up a twitter account. Once set up, you will be able to tweet about new articles on your website. In this sense, your twitter followers will click the link and visit your site. Set up a twitter account here.

8. Link Your Blog to Facebook and Twitter: The Internet is nothing more than a series of links. Your goal is to make it easy for someone to find your website. Once your Facebook page and Twitter account is established, you can then set up automatic updates on each page. Any time you publish a new article your Facebook fans and Twitter followers will know.

9. Set Up Email Opt-In: There is an expression Internet marketing that says your money is your list. Many bloggers make the mistake of relying solely on social networks to manage their list. But as you know, social networks often go out of vogue. So you will want to set up a system whereby you can manage your own email list. Visit our affiliate partners at Aweber to get started.

10. Create Content: It will take search engines a few months to start taking you and your blog seriously. You goal during this time is to continually add content to your blog. You will find this very challenging at first. Keep going! Think of it like a game. If you can write 50 articles over the next two months, you will begin to gain traffic.

11. Sell Ad Space: As your blog gains popularity, one of the easiest ways to make money is to sell ad space on your blog. With this model, more traffic increases the likelihood that someone will click on the ad. And since most ads are based on Pay-Per-Click, this can generate significant revenue. The downside of selling ad space is you may send targeted visitors away from your blog.

12. Create Affiliate Relationships: If you consistently produce great content, your efforts will result in a massive traffic and a robust mailing list. At this point, you may want to start referring your visitors to products and services that complement your niche. This is called affiliate marketing. One of the easiest places to find affiliate products is clickbank.

13. Create Your Own Products: One of the most profitable steps you can take involves leveraging and re-purposing your content to create your own information products and services. While this is a lot more time consuming than promoting affiliate products, the upside is higher profit margins and creative control. Additionally, affiliates start working for you!

14. Increase Your Traffic: There are several ways to drive traffic to your website, including online and offline. You can choose to pay for advertising or look for ways to create free traffic. Some examples include press releases, pay-per-click, search engine optimization, banner ads, newsletters, advertising in magazines, guest posting on blogs and sharing ideas on social platforms.

15. Partner With Other Bloggers: Nothing can help you get noticed in the noise faster than a vote of confidence from a blogger already established in your niche. I suggest taking a moment to send an intro email to these folks and ask for an interview. Because you are thinking about ways to promote other bloggers, this will help you get on their radar.

Most people start blogging, write a few articles and then give up. Don’t be like most people. To rise above the noise and grow traffic, you need to start blogging with the goal of publishing useful content (to serve your audience) for six months straight.

How To Write Blog Articles Fast (This Template Will Save Time)

July 24, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

With a gazillion blog articles getting published every minute, finding ways to write blog articles fast can help you rise above the noise and get noticed. The problem is, if you’re trying to grow your blog while managing a job, kids, a two week vacation and your 401k, where the heck to do you find the time?

To solve this problem, I am going to share the super awesome template I use for all my blog articles. This has been perfected over the past decade and I think you’ll love it. Additionally, this is the also the same template I send to any guest blogger.

How To Write Blog Articles Fast

The following blog article template works great for a 350-500 word article. If you adopt this pattern for writing blog articles, you’ll be able to bust out easy to read, informative blog articles faster than most!

01.) Short paragraph one (w/keyword)
02.) Short paragraph two
03.) Image one (w/keyword alt tag)
04.) h2 Sub Heading (w/keyword)
05.) Short paragraph three
06.) Short paragraph four (w/keyword)
07.) Short paragraph five with brief call to action

If the article goes longer, remove the CTA and extend the pattern.

07.) Short paragraph five
08.) Image two (w/keyword alt tag)
09.) h2 Sub Heading
10.) Short paragraph six (w/keyword)
11.) Short paragraph seven
12.) Short paragraph eight with brief call to action

As you can tell, I sort of followed the pattern for this article. (Can you guess the keyword?)

Additionally, your image selection is super important for driving social shares and engagement. For images, take a quick minute to research Snappa (it’s an affiliate link… if you sign up for the software, I get paid.) Affiliate promotion aside, Snappa is an easy to use online photo editing program with a built in royalty free photo library. For this article, I chose a photo (and added the text in Snappa) because it’s something my ideal reader can relate to.

How To Solve The Great Blogging Paradox This Year

July 1, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

When I started blogging, my goal was to pay all bills and travel at will. I also planned to share all my blogging successes with you. What I didn’t anticipate was just how much blog notoriety can distract you from your goals. And this situation is what I think of as the great blogging paradox. Let me explain…

Growing my blog gave me credibility. And the credibility helped me land lucrative consulting gigs. And one of those gigs turned into a six figure salary, complete with a VP title. As a result, any time I thought about blogging full time, I first compared my online income to my blog income. And without fail, I always made more money on the job. Ugh!

The Great Blogging Paradox

You’ll know you’re in the blogging paradox when your job income continually surpasses your blog income. And no matter what you do, you can’t seem to find any way to get ahead. Then when you combine your blog income with your job income, it’s a lot of money. At those moments, it hardly makes sense to quit your job. So you end up working longer hours to improve both your blog and job success. And it’s an endless cycle.

To break free from the “day job” you need to get super serious about your blogging goals. When I started out, making $5 dollars a day was the goal. Now I’m aiming to make at least $500 dollars per day. I imagine your goal falls somewhere in the middle. To break free of this blogging paradox, you need to increase your numbers (while keeping things simple).

Here Are Some Numbers To Focus On:

1. Increase email subscribers: Despite what the latest and greatest blogging trends will have you believe, focusing on getting email subscribers is the primary goal of your blog. Focus on increasing email subscribers and the sales will follow.

2. Find the value per email subscriber: You can roughly find the value of each email subscriber by dividing your monthly revenue by your monthly subscribers. With my blog, each subscriber is worth $2.40. This number is considered low by most internet marketing standards. But theoretically, it means I can spend up to $2.39 to acquire a subscriber and still be profitable.

3. Get more organic email subscribers: Aside from being free, organic subscribers are often the most engaged (and the most ready to buy). So you need to figure out how to get more. Since a lot of people find my blog through my daily article posts on Facebook, I started sharing more articles each day. This sounds obvious, but it has already increased my organic subscriber rate.

Again, my goal is to create at least $500 dollars per day in blogging revenue by the end of this year. If you are interested in following my journey, you may want to download my toolkit.

Some Practical Thoughts On Building A Marketing Funnel

June 23, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

A marketing funnel is the most essential component of your web business. When working properly, your marketing funnel allows you to automatically convert visitors to leads, leads to customers and customers to repeat customers!

The problem is, with all the fancy software options available, setting up a funnel can be confusing. When I started my web business, I was frustrated by all the complicated technical stuff. As a result, it took me years to learn what I’m about to share with you…

Building A Marketing Funnel?

Here’s the thing. Despite all the marketing guru flowcharts that would make you believe otherwise, a marketing funnel is NOT linear. People don’t just come in the top of your funnel and then fall out of the bottom.

A marketing funnel is messy. It’s complex. And it has nothing to do with software. Paradoxically, a marketing funnel is also extremely simple. It is really just a way to get you (or your brand) in front of as many people as possible. Then you offer value, gain trust, and gain subscribers.

From there your goal is to create engaging campaigns (through email, retargeting, chat bots, videos, post cards, phone calls, and… smoke signals?) so you can add more value, create more trust… And eventually, you can make your pitch.

Then you build more trust.
Then you offer more value.
Then you make a BIGGER pitch.
Then you build more trust.
Then you offer more value.
Then you make an even BIGGER pitch.
Then you build more trust.
Then you offer more value.
Then you make an even BIGGER, BIG pitch.
And then you repeat the process. . . Again and again.

Don’t make this process overly complicated. All the fancy software (like this email service I promote) are just tools to help you accelerate this process and reach more people. The more people like you and trust you, the more they buy from you.

How To Leverage Social Stacking In Facebook Boosts

June 15, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

Social stacking is a Facebook ninja hack that allows you to build ad campaigns around popular posts (and other ads) to generate cheap traffic and leverage social proof in an attempt to lower your CPA. One way to test a social stacking campaign is to boost a popular post on Facebook.

To get started, post an article to your business page. Then do nothing for a few hours. If the article has good engagement (sharing, clicks, comments) then you may want to boost it. And just in case you’re unsure of which posts to boost, Facebook will usually prompt you with something like this:

Facebook Social Stacking

Once you have an engaging post, click the Boost Post button. You’ll then have options to choose your targeting and set a budget. As long as you have your pixel correctly installed on your website, Facebook will track all engagement and activity. (And this data will help you in future Facebook ad campaigns.)

Because my primary blog revolves around filmmaking, I usually choose “filmmaking” as the broad interest. I then limit the geographical reach of my ad to the United States. And I then set the budget to $20-$100 dollars per day.

Social Stacking Momentum

When your boost comes to an end, go into your Facebook ads manager and look at the data. If the ad performed well, you will have generated traffic, gained subscribers and possibly made some sales. In this example, my $50 dollar boost converted 3 sales for a total of $291 in revenue.

Since your boosted post will also have likes, shares and comments, you can further benefit from social stacking by recycling your ad into a new campaign. This gives you the advantage of social proof. And because Facebook factors the previous ad data, you should have a head start for achieving your marketing objective.

Get Email Subscribers

While there are multiple marketing objectives worth testing, when it doubt, I recommend you choose conversions and then work to get more email subscribers. You’ll then select your targeting, budget and placement… And you’ll simply select your popular post (as the ad) and get started.

Like all things marketing, nothing works all the time for every campaign. So I suggest you keep your budget low until you start seeing results. And with a little luck and persistence, you might some favorable results with social stacking.

How To Grow A Profitable Blog Working Your Day Job

May 1, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

If you want to grow a profitable blog while working your day job (so you can eventually quit) you’re not alone. A quick Google search on the subject reveals a gazillion training courses promising that four hours is all you need to free up your life. But you and I know this is BS. But yet still buy the courses.

If you think about it, the reason you aren’t yet a full time blogger (or internet marketer) is because you are bound by negative beliefs. Think about it. From a young age you have been conditioned to seek the approval of family and friends. Can I do this? Can I do that? Is this a good idea? What should I do?

How To Grow A Profitable Blog Working Your Day Job

Your ongoing need for outside approval has spilled into your professional life. Instead of growing your own profitable blog (or writing your own book), you feel an intense responsibility to get a good paying job, create a family and buy a home. You do this because this is what people do.

Even though you have the talent, interest and desire to grow an profitable blog, you still have an intense desire to find and keep a job. Heck, if you’re like most budding bloggers, you probably make a few internet sales each week. Then you drive to work and suffer though nine or ten hours of feeling like a caged animal.

Why do you do this? Why do you keep a job when you obviously have the capacity to make money to free yourself to continually grow your own profitable blog? It is because you don’t yet fully believe in yourself enough to take the plunge. You don’t believe your blog will survive. You don’t have enough gumption to quit the dead-end job and live life on your own terms.

Live Life On Your Own Terms

It’s true. You are doing okay at work. And you are on your way to making a modest amount of passive income through your blog. But you are also miserable. You spend each day eager to get out of the office – just so you can rush home and work on your own blog. But by the time you get home, you’re too damn tired to do anything.

One thing is certain. Asking for permission to live your life is a loser’s game. Asking permission makes you feel like a little kid. Asking permission makes you feel like someone else has power over your life. And without venturing too far into hyperbole, asking permission makes you feel like a slave.

The powerful never ask permission to create their world. I learned this lesson the hard way. I learned this lesson after many years spent living in quiet desperation. And I officially learned this lesson when I started hanging out with successful people.

Successful People Leave Tracks

I know you’ve probably heard this voodoo stuff before. So I’ll spare you the eye-rolling nuggets of wisdom. But I will tell you that all the stuff they say about having a network is true. You really do become the people you spend the most time with. And your network becomes your net-worth!

When powerful people want to accomplish something, they do it. So if you want to be powerful, you need to stop asking permission and go after everything you want. Powerful people never ask: “Do you think I can grow a profitable blog?”

The powerful say:

“I’m saving every penny. When I reach 20K, I am going to quit my job and start my own blog.”

Does that mean that you should be reckless? No. Not at all. What I am saying is, you need a prudent plan of action. You need to ask, and then answer some serious questions:

What do I want in life?
How much will it cost?
What small step can I take today?

Since I live in Los Angles, maintaining a reasonable lifestyle is expensive. As a result, my desired baseline is set at $10,000 per month. If I can maintain 10K, I’m doing okay. Depending on where you live, this number may be much lower. And that’s a good thing.

When growing a profitable blog, small steps add up.

One more guest post…

One more blog article…

Build A Sold Foundation

All of these tasks become a solid foundation for your future blog business. But nothing will happen overnight. In fact, you will likely not see any results for weeks or even years. But one thing is certain. If you do NOTHING, you’ll never get there.

Throughout this blog, I’m going to provide you with experience from the front lines and provide you with success secrets I wish someone shared with me a decade ago. I believe growing a profitable blog is possible for anybody smart enough to read this article.

If your definition of success is personal freedom, then there is only one course of action: You need to start today. Your objective is to start small, build your experience and create an internet following. Once you have a following, you can write your own ticket.

How To Build A Simple Sales Funnel That Gets Results

January 8, 2019 by Jason Brubaker

If you want to build a simple sales funnel that gets results, you’re probably feeling overwhelmed. Between chatbots, social media advertising, non-linear email solutions, and complex landing page software, it often feels like you need to become a software developer before you can promote your product or service. But that’s not true.

Regardless of technology, the fundamentals of selling should always be your focus. Put simply, people buy from people they like and trust. And a sales funnel is simply a series of “touch points” that helps you build profitable relationships at scale.

Sales Funnel = Automated System To Build Trust And Make Sales Online

How To Build A Simple Sales Funnel

One of the easiest ways to build a sales funnel is by focusing on email subscribers. Unlike social media, email offers a great way to cut through noise and build relationships with real people. By real people, I mean people like YOU. Think about it – You’re not just some number in a vast ocean of faceless subscribers… And neither are your email subscribers.

Subscribers + Trust + Targeted Email Offer = Sales

Your email subscribers have problems that need solving. And it is up to you to find ways to continually provide more value.

Get Started

When it comes time to build your simple sales funnel, you’ll need to focus on three components including a landing page, a trust sequence and a sales sequence. To make this easy, let’s pretend that you’re a professional puppy trainer. And the goal of your business is to find more customers who need puppy training. In this example, your simple sales funnel may look like this:

Landing Page: This is a simple page that asks people for an email address in exchange for something of value, called a lead magnet. In this example, your lead magnet might be a basic puppy training course, delivered via 5-7 emails…
Trust Sequence: The goal of your trust sequence is to share value and position yourself as an authority. In this example, it would be the puppy training course.
Sales Sequence: Once you build trust trust via the puppy training course, your sales sequence is simply 3-5 emails added to the mix, designed to sell your puppy training services. (If you don’t yet have a way for customers to transact with you, just set up a PayPal account and then include a link to your PayPal page in each sales email.)

The experience gained by mastering these basics will naturally lead to other, more complex sales funnels. But for now, just keep it simple. And if you’re ready to get started, I recommend researching Aweber (they pay me to promote, but I’ve used them on my own sites for years.) Aweber is a simple email software solution that allows you to do most of this stuff.

How to Use Email Marketing to To Accelerate Your Blogging Success

March 5, 2017 by Jason Brubaker

Here’s the deal-e-o. Despite all the hype out there, many bloggers DO NOT get results. It’s a sad fact, but true. Many bloggers spend months grinding out articles only to make a few dollars. And this is the sole reason (I think) why the internet is littered with millions of abandoned blogs.

If you’re not getting results with your blog, it is because you’re not focused on getting email subscribers. Unbeknownst to most, successful bloggers are also proficient in email marketing. So in our short time together, I am going to share a few email marketing tactics that can save you years of frustration.

The reason my popular filmmaking blog didn’t make money the first year was not for lack of traffic. It was because I didn’t know email marketing rules! (And I didn’t know what rules to follow.) Suffice it to say, had I not discovered email, I too may have given up on blogging. And I may have never known how awesome it is to sell stuff in my sleep.

How to Use Email Marketing to To Accelerate Your Blogging Success

As a blogger, your primary goal is to add value to your readers. And one way you add value is by building a genuine, caring relationship with your audience. From day one, you will want to start collecting email addresses.

For this, I recommend using a reputable third-party email marketing service such as Aweber. In full disclosure, Aweber does pay me to promote, but it is the company I utilize for my own blogging business. With Aweber, as soon as you sign up for one of their affordable accounts, you can create ways for readers to connect with you.

Email Marketing Rules — **My Morning Inbox (Sometimes)**

Step 1: Create The Ethical Bribe

If you’re anything like me, your email inbox is a twitter feed. It’s hard to read all the emails that come through. It is even harder to respond to any emails. . . Unless you immediately see the value. Your audience is the same.

Presenting value is one email marketing rule you must never violate. This is why it is vitally important that you establish your value from the very beginning. One easy way to create value is by offering something called an ethical bribe.

An ethical bribe is something of tremendous value that you offer in exchange for an email address. For example, the day after I started this blog, I set up my own ethical bribe. Here’s the link.

If you just clicked that link, you were redirected through a series of baby steps that resulted in an email asking you to confirm your subscription. Assuming you clicked, you received my blogging checklist as well as some awesome blogging tips like this one!

While I am obviously utilizing this list-building example to create a more meaningful relationship with you… Take the next few minutes to set up exactly what I did here.

Here are three steps to building a blog business:

Set up a blog via my Bluehost affiliate link.
Sign up for an account via my Aweber affiliate link.
Add your Aweber links to your blog.

(If any of this is confusing, get on my mailing list for up-to-date blogging tips.)

Why you let a 3rd party manage your email marketing.

Whenever I give talks, invariably someone will ask me why they should utilize a 3rd party email provider instead of their own email account. While there are tons of professional reasons why you would never send commercial email from your personal account – One major reason for utilizing Aweber is due to some email marketing rules (also known as Spam laws.)

While I am not a lawyer and can’t offer any legal advice, there are email marketing rules and spam laws set up to protect people from jerks. Utilizing a 3rd party email service provider helps you abide by these rules. They do this by insisting that you:

Use a double opt-in sign up. (Person opts in and then gets an email saying: Are you sure?)
Emails sent from these providers include a way for subscribers to unsubscribe.

Why I Think Email Marketing Rules

The biggest reason I love email marketing is because it allows me to automate my business. This is done by setting up an email sequence and putting the emails on an auto-responder.

Aweber provides the following video to explain auto-responders:

Try AWeber’s Autoresponders for Free

As soon as a visitor opts-in to your list, their contact information is added to your database and managed for you, automatically! These subscribers are now part of your “list,” and you can email them with updates, deals and other valuable information. Again, if any of this is confusing, download my blogging checklist and get on my mailing list for up-to-date blogging tips.

How to Pick a Blog Topic Your Audience Will Love

February 1, 2017 by Jason Brubaker

A few years ago, I was between jobs and worried about my future. I picked a blog topic and started writing. Over time my blog grew to a point where it paid for all my bills.

It wasn’t easy. And before I share my blogging secrets, it is important that we get a few things straight. Blogging success is going to require that you remain dedicated, passionate and constant.

This starts with finding your WHY. Why do you want to blog? What do you hope to achieve? Once you figure out WHY you’re blogging, you can focus on picking a blog topic your audience will love.

How to Pick a Blog Topic Your Audience Will Love

There are millions of blogs. And many of them do not make money. One of the biggest reasons bloggers fail is because they pick an unpopular blog topic. So the first thing you need to do is pick a blog topic people actually care about.

I originally started my blog to help people in the indie film community get movies made, seen and selling. I started with that topic because I had made some movies and knew the challenges. And I also knew there was an audience.

To choose your blog topic, you will need to answer the following questions:

What is your preferred blog topic?
Who is your intended target audience for your blog topic?
Does a trade show exist for your blog topic?

Answering these questions will force you to sharpen your concept. And if a trade show exists for your blog topic, odds are good you’ve tapped into a profitable audience.

The other thing you can do (and this is a little more nerdy) is to find out how many people are searching for your topic online. The Google Keyword Planner provides a great tool for this. Follow this link and log into the Keyword planner with your Google account.

Once you’re logged in, your next step is to search for new keyword and ad group ideas.

From there you will be able to enter keywords related to your topic. In this example, I used the keywords “how to make money online.”

Google will then provide detail on the amount of monthly searches. And while it might be pretty exciting to choose a popular topic, this also indicates that there are many competitors. So you will need to decide if competing is worth it.

Hopefully these tips will help you pick a blog topic your audience will love. If you enjoyed this blog article, you’ll love my blogging checklist!

How to Start A Blog — The Ultimate Guide

January 15, 2017 by Jason Brubaker

If you’re wondering how to how to start a blog, you’re not alone. Long before I started blogging, everything about publishing words on the web seemed like a distant concept, reserved for the technically savvy.

I had no idea how to start a blog, let alone make money blogging. Just like you, I started reading all sorts of websites, where I picked up a few tips.

When I decided to start a blog, it wasn’t pretty. And because I went into blogging without a solid plan, my initial focus was all over the place. (I want to help you avoid these mistakes when you start a blog.)

Like most things in life, you get better with experience. And when if you want to learn how to make money blogging, this is the rule.

So as a very rough game-plan, you will have to write at least a dozen articles before you develop your flow. You will have to write at least fifty articles before Google starts sending you traffic. And you will have to keep on writing if you plan to make money.

All of this gets easier if you remember one key point. The best blog articles solve problems. So if you want to know how to make money blogging, you should always answer this question: “What problems do you hope to solve?”

How to Start A Blog — The Ultimate Guide

Defining your niche is an essential first step when figuring out how to make money blogging. After that, the real challenge is creating content that will serve your audience for the long haul. Here are 15 steps on how to start a blog:

1. Pick Your Niche Topic: Many people start a blog to chase overnight riches. Don’t do this. While it is important to set high business expectations, it is important to view your blogging business with a long term perspective. So when you start a blog, realize it may take you months to figure out how to make money blogging. So to grow your blogging business, you must first focus on a topic that you are passionate about.

2. Break Your Topic Into Smaller Categories: Once you find your niche, your next step is to break your topic into smaller chunks. For example, when I started my filmmaking blog, I broke the topic into smaller categories, consisting of writing, producing, directing, marketing and distribution. By breaking your own niche topic into smaller categories, you will define a framework for your topic. When you start a blog, take a moment to create at least five main categories.

3. Create 10 Articles For Each Category: After breaking your niche into smaller categories, create at least ten article ideas for each category. This simple exercise will allow you to start a blog with at least fifty article ideas. And as a new blogger, you must discipline yourself to write a new article, record a new audio and make a new video at least once a week. Fifty article ideas will get you close to one year’s worth of content.

4. Choose Blog Platform: Your next step is to decide which kind of blog platform you want to set up. When you start a blog, there are two ways to do this. Firstly, you can utilize a blogging network, like www.Tumblr.com or www.WordPress.com or you can choose to host your own blog. If you really want to figure out how to make money blogging, I suggest you forgo the blogging networks and host your own blog via www.wordpress.org

6. Create Your Facebook Page: In order to provide community, at the very least you will want to set up a Facebook page that links to your blog. This page will allow you to interact and build relationships with your audience. To set up a Facebook page, click this link and follow the instructions.

7. Create A Twitter Account: When you start a blog, every visit counts. One of the easiest ways to get visitors on your website is to set up a twitter account. Once set up, you will be able to tweet about any new articles on your website. Your twitter followers will click the link and visit your site. Set up twitter.

8. Link Your Blog to Facebook and Twitter: The Internet is nothing more than a series of links. Your goal is to make it easy for someone to find your website. Once your Facebook page and Twitter account is established, you can then set up an easy way for your readers to share your updates. In this regard, any time you publish a new article your Facebook fans and Twitter followers will know.

9. Set Up Email Opt-In: There is an expression Internet marketing that says your money is your list. When you start a blog, one common mistake is relying solely on social networks to engage your audience. But as you know, social networks often go out of vogue. So you will want to set up a system whereby you can manage your own email list. Visit our friends at Aweber to get started.

10. Create Content: It will take search engines a few months to start taking you and your blog seriously. So when you start a blog, your primary goal is to continually add content to your blog. You will find this very challenging at first. Keep going! Think of it like a game. Write 50 articles over the next two months, you will begin to gain traffic.

11. Sell Ad Space: After you start a blog, you will start thinking about ways to make money. So as your blog gains popularity, one of the easiest ways to generate income is to sell ad space on your blog. With this model, more traffic increases the likelihood that someone will click on an ad. And since most ads are based on Pay-Per-Click, this can generate significant revenue. The downside of selling ad space is you may send targeted visitors away from your blog.

12. Create Affiliate Relationships: If you produce great content, your efforts will result in a massive traffic and a robust mailing list. You may want to start referring your visitors to products and services that complement your niche. This is called affiliate marketing. One of the easiest places to find affiliate products is clickbank.

13. Create Your Own Products: One of the most profitable steps you can take involves leveraging and re-purposing your content to create your own information products and services. While more time consuming than promoting affiliate products, the upside is higher margins and creative control. And affiliates start working for you!

15. Partner With Other Bloggers: Nothing can help you get noticed in the noise faster than a vote of confidence from a blogger already established in your niche. I suggest taking a moment to send an intro email to these folks and ask for an interview. Think about ways to promote other bloggers. This will help you get on their radar.

Simply put, finding ways on how to make money blogging consists of a few basic steps. You will need to set up a site, capture traffic, sell products and then scale up! If you want to find out more about how to start a blog, you might enjoy my free blogging eCourse.