10 Commandments of Money Making Blogs

If you're trying to make money with your blog or website, it's a good idea to keep many things in mind to maximize your earnings. These concepts include having your blog hosted, using search engine optimization, choosing the best blogging platform and more.

Here's a look at 10 commandments to live by in the money making blog field.

10 Commandments of Money Maker Blogs 1) Thou shall have your own blog/site hosted. If you want to get serious with your blog or website to make money, make sure you have a great domain name and have it hosted on your own website. Blogger, Wordpress and other sites have great free platforms, but they will never provide you the true flexibility you need on their basic free versions.

2) Thou shall use Wordpress. Use Wordpress rather than Blogger for your blogging software (it's the way to go if you have your own hosting). Blogger is great for a free start up, but Wordpress offers you a ton more flexibility once you're on your own site. It basically helps you create and mold your site, and has some great plug-ins as well. WordPress is currently at Version 2.3 as of this post. Wordpress can be downloaded here.

3) Thou shall not deprive readers of ways to keep updated. Make sure you give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, both by email and RSS feed reader links. Use Feedburner.com and its many features to do so.

4) Thou shall accept comments on your blog. These provide you a way to see reader's thoughts on your topics, collect feedback and even use it for future material to blog on. Responding back to the comments lets your readers have a sense of connection and feel as if they are part of a community environment. Consider a reader a customer, so comments are their ultimate tribute to your work.

5) Thou shall comment in other areas wisely. There's a good way to promote and an evil way. Examples of bad ways of commenting include blatant spam, not even referring to the post topic you comment on, or just plain poor grammar and spelling. Act in good faith and judgement when commenting forums or other blogs. The "hey cool blog, check out my link" won't cut it and won't make any friends in the blogosphere.

6) Thou shall explore and use the benefits of social media. Myspace, Facebook, Orkut, Gather, Squidoo, etc etc. These sites can all provide you with free internet real estate to promote on and help you connect and network with an audience for your topic. Additionally, they can provide you a pulse of what's hot within your niche.

7) Thou shall measure your site's success. Have a way to measure your sites visits/traffic. Google Analytics is recommended. It will tell you traffic levels, locations of visitors (on a nice map), search engine terms that brought people to your blog and more.

8) Thou shall network with other bloggers in your niche topic. This can only help you grow your blog's success as other bloggers may possibly show you link love or refer to a post you made. Challenge a fellow sports blogger to a NFL sunday football prediction showdown. Then each blogger blogs about the picks. Offer to be a guest blogger or ask for a blogger to guest on yours. There's many possibilities here to befriend and work with "your competition".

9) Thou shall learn and harness SEO. A very important commandment, you must strive to make your blog as search engine friendly and popular as possible. Learn the techniques of Search Engine Optimization. Otherwise do not expect search engine traffic or much money to be made. SEOMOZ.org makes for a good resource with tools and articles to help you with SEO.

10) Thou shall constantly strive to improve your efforts. Reinvest money made into your blog/site. Constantly tweak design aspects and research ways to promote. Look into new ways to promote, learn new tools you can use to increase productivity. Doing these things will work to make your blog a better business.

Remember that if you are trying to make money with your blog, that makes it like your full or part-time business. To grow that business takes dedication and hard work. Feel free to use the 10 commandments above as your guide for building a better blog as your business. Commandments #9 and #10 are especially important to always practice, as they will provide you with constant improvement and help you to make your blog the best moneymaker it can be.