Who couldn’t use a little extra income each month in these difficult economic times? You’ve probably heard that you can make money blogging, in fact you have probably been bombarded by email offers shouting out how to make thousands overnight simply by blogging. Fortunately you can tell a scam when you see one and you haven’t fallen into that marketers’ trap of buying program after program looking for the one that actually works.

The real shame of it all is that you can make money blogging and thousands are already doing it. You’re certainly not going to make it overnight but you can build up a nice stream of revenue to help out with the household expenses if you’re willing to put a little effort into it. In fact you can make thousands (not overnight) if you invest the time and energy. You actually could blog your way out of your daytime gig.

But to make any money at all you have to understand the basics of the blogging business.

Pick A Niche

Obviously you are going to need a subject to write about and picking the correct one is the difference between success and failure. The ultimate objective is to get traffic to your site, develop a relationship with the visitor, and then offer something for sale. Selecting the right, low competition niche is critical in achieving that objective.

So how do you do that?

Well there are some general rules to keep in mind. An old direct marketing saying says that a marketer (and that’s what you are going to become) needs to find a starving crowd, find out what they are starving for, and then feed it to them.

Another qualifier is to find a crowd whose need is on their mind at least once a day and that they are emotionally invested in. For example if a person has hypertension they probably think about it everyday as they take their daily pills. They are emotionally invested because this disease could potentially kill them. What they are starving for is a way to cure the condition or at least end the side effects of the medication.

Niches that address health, relationships or wealth are loaded with these kinds of crowds.

Finding a crowd is easy. Finding a crowd that is starving for something takes a bit more work.

One way to find out what that crowd is hungry for is to take a look at what they are buying. You can do this online by going to Amazon and looking at the best selling items in a particular category. Or you can piggyback on the thousands of dollars that others have spent in market research and see what they are selling. For example a trip to the website for “Dummies” books will give you a list of titles that they offer. If those titles weren’t selling they wouldn’t be offered.

Once you’ve picked a niche, try to make it as focused as possible. For example if you pick trading stocks then start refining it down like day trading to day trading futures. Focusing on day trading futures eliminates a great deal of competition and speaks to an audience who has a specific interest. By the way, the keyword phrase “day trading futures” has about 9000 searches a month.

Pick A Product

Once you’ve selected a niche then you need something to sell and that’s the easy part. Almost every manufacturer sells through affiliates and that includes big names like Wal Mart, Macy’s and literally thousands of others. Using the above example you could do a Google search for day trading related products by entering “day trading affiliate”. You’ll get some junk but you’ll also get some gems. Select three or four and sign up.

Own Your Blog

There are obviously free blogging platforms like Blogspot.com, Weebley.com and a host of 2.0 networks like HubSpot, Squidoo and hundreds of others. However, if you want to blog for money buy your own domain name and host it your self.

There are two major reasons to make this modest investment. First of all it is your site and you are not subject to anybody’s terms and conditions. If you are on a free site, and they decide that your niche as a group is spamming, they can close your blog. With your own domain you can do as you like and don’t have to worry about being slapped down by anybody.

Secondly the domain name itself is key to good search engine optimization. Using the day trading example you would try to get daytradingfutures.com or.org or.net.

Content Is King

You can have the hottest niche and the most popular product but if your content doesn’t have value you’ll fail. Don’t put up fluff just to put something up. The content has to be grammatically correct and inform or entertain the reader. If you have a difficult time writing then contract it out. There are numerous freelance sites that have qualified writers at reasonable cost.

Take Action

Once you have this blog up you have to keep adding quality content and that’s one of the beauties of using the free blog platform WordPress for your blog. If you take a weekend and write 15 or 20 entries, you can load them into WordPress and schedule them to publish over a specified amount of time. This then gives the impression of “natural” growth which Google loves and also gives you a break from writing for nearly three weeks.

The Internet is filled with successful people left and right that have actually made money just by doing things online that are far different than normal activities done in traditional daily jobs. The striking thing about this is that these people make money by doing the work at home using their own computers and/or laptops. Work at home activities provides more flexibility and better time management. It will be you that will have the motivation to work just so you can earn and that is a good mindset to keep when you want to be successful. There are a number of work from home ideas that you can apply to your work from home routines and affiliate marketing is one of them. You still need to know things about affiliate marketing if you hope to move into profits.

Using the Affiliate’s Tools and Resources

Your success in affiliate marketing depends a lot on the program that you are signing up to. Many affiliate programs come with tools and other resources that can give you all sorts of work from home ideas that do not hold back when it comes to creation and customization. Many affiliates give out free eBooks that teach you how to market to their intended audience while the better affiliates give templates, site layouts, and other tools that make it extremely easy to advertise the products and services online.

Coming Up with a Good Website

The affiliate’s website is likely to be impressive enough if they have lots of affiliates bringing people to the site. But if you want to talk long run, create a website of your own. Sticking to one affiliate company is just the early phase of your quest for financial freedom. Once you are used to your favorite affiliate marketing methods, you may be tempted to sign up for other affiliate companies and promote them using work from home ideas as well. You will have an easier time promoting multiple programs if you have a centralized location which will be your business website. Being successful as an affiliate means promoting you and your business as an identity. If people see that you are offering good stuff, you will likely get more sales providing that you are marketing to the right crowds. Once your website is set up, purchase a domain name as well so you do not have to advertise a lengthy affiliate link.

Going for Smart Advertising Techniques

A good website won’t prosper if you do not dedicate some time in advertising your site. You can come off to a quick start if you join classified ad sites and post ads in the appropriate categories. Once you notice some traffic, you can shift to better sites and that have higher turnaround such as forums and social networking sites. Don’t forget to tell your friends too because they can indirectly help you advertise by spreading the word or give you more work from home ideas.

Giving Away Freebies

Don’t forget that there are other Internet marketers that are using good work from home ideas as well and you will be competing with these individuals if they are linked to affiliate programs similar to yours. One way to make your website more valuable than others is to include freebies such as free eBooks or free advertising techniques if you are promoting an affiliate business opportunity. Affiliate marketing is very lucrative if you play your cards right and get in the right programs. You must sign up for something that relates with your work from home ideas so you can enjoy yourself while you climb to financial freedom.