Make a Real Living Off Your Blog in 2007

Blogging is "hot ta death," as the kids would say. So this New Year's Day 2007 has me ruminating over ways to increase my blogging-from-home (or wherever) business goals to reach my ultimate goal: making a real living and drawing a six-figure-plus salary from blogging in 2007.

Funny how some people laugh at that goal or write "good luck!" as if making a living off your blog is some kind of impossible dream. But I know that God is no respecter of persons, and if Darren Rowse and Michael Arrington can do it, so can I thru Christ.

So here goes with my blogging goals and visions for 2007, which all will intrinsically help to increase my revenue by driving blog traffic and the like. Hope they help you quit the job you hate -- that you're so stressed over you get sick in the parking lot upon arrival -- and make all your money doing the blogging thing you love:

Subscribe to more blogs, leave more comments...This morning I went thru my Associated Content email archive and subscribed to a lot of other content producers' pages and added them to my Favorite CPs tab. I know I've been a little stingy in this regard. Oh look how they worship me! Sure I leave comments, but the Lord showed me how much people have been e-mailing and supporting me and reading my work without me reciprocating. So I vow in 2007 to be even more supportive of folks who are kind enough to leave me comments and actually read their stuff. Cast your bread upon the waters and in many days it will return to you...

Stay up on the latest techie stuff...like Business 2.0 magazine, which seems so up on the latest Web 2.0 happenings. I'm also subscribing left and right to other blogs for up-to-the-minute happenings. Plus, I will act sooner on good techie tips like the one email I got from Google Adsense explaining how to implement video ads. I'm finding they pay a lot better since I've put them on my blog...

Increase pageviews. Google Analytics said my blog received 47,597 pageviews for the month of December. Not too shabby, bless the Lord. So my goal is too keep doing what I'm being led to do and skyrocket that number by following the edict to...

Only write what burns in my gut. I'll take the PayPerPost.com assignments that tie in with what I've already been wanting to write about and leave the rest behind, no matter what they pay. I'll stop when it's not working or becomes boring.

Use writing revenue to upgrade equipment. I was so jealous when I watched Blog Wars on the Sundance Channel this past weekend and saw all those bloggers unchained from their workstations and blogging on nice and thin satellite notebooks in various parts of their houses or in other cities -- gasp! When my Amazon Associates and Google Adsense revenue starts rolling in, I'm going to reinvest it to eventually buy one of those cool, flat laptops that those bloggers were carrying blithely under their arms.

Keep posting on multiple platforms. I'll continue publishing on my beloved Associated Content, American Chronicle (love them!), Orble blogs and...

Set up a back-up blog. Working in the tech department of Charles Schwab taught me a thing or two about business resumption planning. Heaven forbid I should rely on having all my eggs in one basket like I've been doing and something go wrong. So in 2007, I will set up a back up blog on a totally different platform that accepts HTML. I guess that's what I already have on American Chronicle in a way, but I want one with total control. I'm gonna look into TypePad or buying a new domain from GoDaddy or something...suggestions?

Become a serious podcaster...or vlogger (video blogger) if you prefer. Before the month of January closes, I'm declaring I will have either a point-and-shoot camcorder or one of the lovely camcorders I laid my hands on in BestBuy and claimed in Jesus' Holy Name as mine in my hands. Something like this camcorder that I can use to create professional-looking videos and win that 15 Seconds contest. If the $1.65 billion success of YouTube being purchased by Google taught us nothing else this year, it's that podcasting is the present, the future and everything...

Leave the blogosphere and return to the real world once and a while. Like this morning at 2:30 a.m. or so, after our guests left and I ran to the computer just to clear up the 23 emails I had waiting. But my husband said "Come to bed," so I hit the off button. So in all my "getting" this year, I will remember when to leave the cyberworld behind. After all we can't serve God and mammon, right?

Increase my Google PageRank, which for some reason is stuck at a 3 right now. Some say this is due to link leakage, so I got rid of my blogroll, but I'm still gonna link out to other places that will help folks. I'll still link to myself as much as possible, and work on putting more of my old pieces with pics on my sidebar and pray this helps. Google should be reexamining the PageRanks soon (every quarter, I read), so hopefully my Google PageRank will increase soon. The higher my PageRank, the more I can accept better-paying PayPerPost assignments.

Increase my Technorati Ranking...from its current rank of 78,722 out of about 55 million blogs. When I first claimed my blog it was around a million and something, so I thank God that this increase in ranking will continue to happen as I blog daily about the stuff He tells me to blog about and the topics people are searching for. I declare I will crack the Top 100!

Blessed the Name of the Lord! Blessed be Your glorious Name...You give and take away, You give and take away...(Can you tell what song I just listened to?)

So it'll be interesting to see my stats exactly one year from today, New Year's Day, 2008. Of course, you'll be the first to know when I crack that six-figure ceiling!