Blogs and blogging have become an Internet phenomenon. According to Phil Bradley’s weblog: “More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002. 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann. 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income. 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.”
“72% of those who are self-employed and blogging are interested in attracting new clients. Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed Bloggers are blogging as much as or more than ever (73%, 76% and 80%, respectively), while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less. 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry. 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog.”
Technorati reports: “Of those who have monetized their blogging to at least some extent:
• 54% are Part-Timers
• 32% are Self-Employed
• 14% are Corporate
While the mean annual revenue for those who advertised on their blogs was $42,548.00 for all, part-timers averaged $14,447.00 and for those who were self-employed income was $122,222.00.”
These statistics alone prove there is a vast market available for anyone interested in creating a home based business through blogging and 3 types of blogs you can profit from are:
1. Automated affiliate blogs can be set up to run essentially on their own. Instead of adding your content and your products by hand, you can add a special script that will post product images, descriptions and your affiliate links automatically. These scripts are known as affiliate data feed scripts and the major affiliate networks online allow you as the webmaster to upload data feeds of all their products.
These ’feeds’ are actually just text files which contain a list of their products, specially formatted to be pulled in and displayed by a data feed script. This simplifies the whole affiliate blog process because when you join an affiliate program which has data feeds you simply request data feed access and you automatically have your own virtual store.
Because most of the content creation is taken care of for you, this frees up more time for you to concentrate on marketing your blog and driving traffic to your website. However, as a side note, it is best to add some of your own content to give your site its own identity and a human face so as to avoid any spamming accusations.
2. Informational blogs are another popular form of day-to-day editorializing. These type of blogs usually concentrate on news and “how to” articles and these are the most fashionable in the world of Internet marketing. For example, an Internet marketing focused blog would contain articles related to different areas of advertising online such as traffic generation. These editorials would then contain links to products related to this topic which your visitors can purchase. You can also monetize your website in other ways such as including adsense ads and banner advertising.
3. Product Review Blogs are popular, profitable and can be very interesting to create. This type of website keeps their readers updated on the latest news about the newer products on the market as well as reviews of each new device on the web. However, blogs like these can involve a lot of research and hard work depending on how you approach it. It would be much easier to focus on one product niche rather than having a broad overall view of the new merchandise because you would never find the time to use all of the gadgets before writing your review.
Also access to some of the newer items could also pose a problem. For example, zoom in on the newest DVD players on the market or the latest flat screen televisions. This will make your task less time consuming and allow you to focus on other areas of your enterprise. These blogs can also be monetized in the same way as informational blogs by adding adsense, affiliate links and banners.
Taking either of these 3 approaches, and implementing them correctly, can provide you with a handsome income from your home based business online for many years to come.