If you have been online for any period of time you know that all you have to do is put up a blog and you will be making six figures a month.

At least that’s what the ads tell you!

Well, I am here to cry, “shenanigans!”

It isn’t quite that simple.  Yes, you can go to sites like Blogger and have a blog up and running in minutes but that doesn’t mean that you will make money. It just means that you will have a blog and that is all it means.

I don’t care how many affiliate links you put on the blog or how many products you sell from it.  You aren’t going to make a dime from it unless you put some effort into it and have it constructed the right way.

What do I mean by constructed the right way?

It is actually simple to do as long as you know what you are doing.  Just putting up a blog on Blogger won’t get you visitors to your blog.  I don’t care what that $47 course you purchased on how to make millions on Blogger told you, you won’t get any visitors unless you did your research.

I know the idea of doing some work to earn an income is scaring a lot of you away right now.  That is because you are constantly barraged with hype that tells you, “Make $10,000 Per Month Blogging! Guaranteed!” If you are like me you have probably purchased a number of these products and found out they didn’t tell you anything that would help you.

That is because the copywriters knew what they were doing and they pushed your emotional triggers to get you to believe that you will make $10,000 per month simply by purchasing the product.  We all know that is total BS!

If you want to earn money online it is exactly the same as earning money offline.

OK, I can see a bunch of you disagreeing with the previous statement saying no way you have to know how to FTP and upload and download and all those other things.

But give me a chance to explain.

To earn money offline you need to have something other people want.  You either need to have knowledge, skill or products that people will pay for.

This is exactly the same with online income.

You need to have something other people want and are willing to pay for and it is the same basic items, knowledge, skill or products.

I defy you to find something online or offline that people pay for that doesn’t fit into one of these categories.

Some of you might point out tabloid blogs that make a lot of money.  Yes, there are a few of them that make a good chunk of change every month but for every one that is profiting there are 10 making no money.  The difference is the profitable ones have the skill they need to get people to their site which is why they can sell advertising for big bucks on their blogs.

This brings us back to blogging for profits the topic of this post.

I truly believe that everyone can make money blogging.  BUT I don’t believe everybody will make money blogging.

The reason for this is there are too many people looking for that magic button that will bring them instant income without putting in any effort.  They believe this because the hype they read on sales pages is designed to make them believe this.  The end result is usually a crushing blow to their morale and they think everything is a scam and just give up.

The magic button does not exist! You are not going to make money for doing nothing!

Even winning the lottery requires putting in the effort to buy the ticket.

If you are planning to blog for profit you need to do some (here’s that dirty four letter word again) work.

• You need to know what niche you are going into.
• You need to know what keywords to target.
• You need to know how to optimize your blog.
• You need to know what blogging platform to use.
• You need to know how to monetize your blog.
• You need to know how to get traffic to your blog.
• You need to know what content to add to your blog.

This is just the beginning of the list but as I said earlier, I firmly believe that anyone can make money with a blog. It is just a matter of knowing the right things to do and then doing them or getting someone else to do them for you.

But this brings us back to you putting in the effort.

First you need to cut through the hype and figure out what you truly need to do, figure out what you don’t know that you need to know.  Then learn what you need to know and do it.

There are a lot of courses out there that will show you how to blog but I only know of one that will cover everything you need to know.  Blogging Beginners, I am a little prejudiced since this is mine and Wizzer’s course but that doesn’t diminish the value of the course.

Tags: blogging, Blogging for Profit, Online Income

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 1:12 pm and is filed under blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.