Lessons i’ve learned about making money online with blog after 1 year

Hurray … today this site turns 1 year old (actually it should be on 6 July but at that time im still using free Wordpress.com blog so i dont count it anymore) :) … at first i never thought that i’d be coming this far simply by just blogging about anything (although most of the time i wrote about Computers, and Game related content). And of course it’s all thanks to those who’s visiting this site (regular visitors or just passer by). And as the title said, this time i’m going to tell you what i’ve learned so far about make money online by Blogging

1. Write Useful Content

Content is king, and that mean if you really want to drive visitors to your site, of course you’ll need to create useful content. Let’s say you love to write about yourself, your cat’s, etc … but think about it this way, what if you’re looking at some unknown blog writing about themself or their cat. Do you really care about it ? … i’ll leave the answer to you

2. Search Engine Rulez

Forget those who says that Search Engine is useless, because search engine is the first source of your traffic no matter if your site has large user base or not, so you’ll need to make sure your site is optimized for search engine because that’s how most people find your site

3. Learn to fix your mistake and never give up to early

Let’s say you’ve set a target on making your site to make specific amount of money after six months of blogging. But when that time come, you didn’t really make anything from your site. Now what you should do then ? first thing is of course look at what you’ve wrote so far and ask yourself, does your content gives valuable information to those who’s visiting your site ?

But what happen if you decided to give up on blogging at this time instead of learning to fix your mistake ? Here’s a good lesson i’ve learned from Electronic Arts (i know EA is on different level than blog, but look at below paragraph)

According to the 1982 business plan, the company’s original business goals were to grow to a billion-dollar company within its first six years and to "make software that makes a personal computer worth owning." At the time, Electronic Arts was the 136th game publisher in the U.S. EA eventually attained its goal of becoming a billion-dollar company, though it took 12 years to do so.

4. If you really want to make money, you’ll need to spend some money first

If you’re really serious about making money, of course you’ll need to spend some money first in order to do it and in this case you’ll need good hosting company (for more flexibility, and control), and a domain name only or perhaps to promote your site by placing your site ads on other site

Let’s take an example, Wordpress.com offer you a free unlimited blog hosting using wordpress (in terms of bandwidth and post storage not image, etc) and top notch server (no problem for getting digged, or slashdotted) but the downside from their service is … you can’t place any advertisement on your site (and that’s including affiliate links)

Now what about Blogger.com / blogspot ? basically they have the same offer just like Wordpress.com, with the exception you’re allowed to place advertisement on your blog unfortunately with this downside :

• 3 out of 4 Blogger urls are SPAM : source although previously i’ve wrote about it too … which mean most people don’t trust blogger powered blogs anymore (or at least for me)

I knew both of them are offering domain mapping so you can use your own domain name instead of using their subdomain to look more professional, but that’s the point

5. The only thing you need to know from other website that tell you about make money online is what advertisement program they’ve joined

This may sound a little bit harsh, but one thing i’ve learned about making money online is by looking on what advertisement program are used by the big site / or other website, because that’s how you’re going to make money online

6. Do what you love and money will follow you

I think this tips already explain it all,

What tips would you give someone just starting out in blogging if they wanted to build a profitable blog?

First, pick a topic you love, one that you can’t wait to write about every day. If I wasn’t truly obsessed with productivity, I would have never lasted at Lifehacker. Second, center your site on the reader, not yourself. Provide useful, informative, entertaining material that readers will come back to over and over again. Third, measure your success by your readership and the response you get from others, not your Adsense checks. Once you build your audience, the money will follow

If you have your own experience about this, of course i’d be delighted if you could share some of your experiences too :)