There has been an explosion in the popularity of blogs and blogging over the past few years and it is easy to see why. There are millions of different blogs around, each one a source of constantly updated content and information in a bid to educate and entertain their readership. People blog for fun, for the benefit of their family, for their own enjoyment or even to try and make a bit of money. Blogging for profit has become one of the most popular reasons why people start a blog – but how do you go about doing this?

You may want to try out a free blooging platform such as Blogger or WordPress or you could establish your own website with a top level doman. Either choice is fine, but you may look more professional if you have your own domain name. If you are looking to transform your blog into a business then purchasing a domain name along with professional hosting is highly recommended.

Again, if you are looking to turn your blog into a business then it is important that it looks good. You can try and design it yourself, however it would be better to employ a professional web designer to take care of this for you as they will be able to do it in a fraction of the time and to a much higher standard. By all means search for some quality blog templates if your budget is small but you really are best hiring an experienced designer. If your blog is set out in such a way that it has three columns then this will leave more space for advertisements.

Adverts usually take the form of contextual advertising from Google Adsense. As traffic to your blog increases, so does the chance that someone will click on one of these adverts. This in turn will passively generate income for you.

You may also wish to try and sell advertising to other blog owners and advertisers. The simple use of a ‘place your advert here’ button may be enough to attract some easy money. Alternatively there are online programs you can join that will match blogs with advertisers and then handle all the finances for you. Examples of these are PayPerPost, Smorty and Blogitive who will all offer you opportunities to make extra cash with your blog by writing posts that contain backlinks to advertiser’s websites.

With all this focus on selling adverts it is important that you dont neglect the marketing of your own blog in order to get visitors. The great thing about starting blogging to make money is that it requires very little financial expenditure. On top of this advertising is inexpensive and quite often free. Avenues to explore when it comes to marketing your blog are articicle marketing, blogrolling and pay per click advertising but dont forget to get involved in the blogging community and comment on other blogs in order to start online relationships. Once people find out about you, you will find that people will quite naturally link to your site. Remember that blogging to make money requires continuous effort and is not the sort of thing where you can put your feet up and hope that the money comes rolling in!

Author Bio: Dave Matthews is writing on behalf of the Cheap Web Design Company, a leading supplier of stylish cheap websites.

Category: Jobs
Keywords: web design, cheap website, cheap web design, blogs, digital marketing, wordpress