You’ve all seen the adverts. “Freelance writers wanted!” they scream from the pages of just about every freelance jobs site on the Internet. “Get paid to blog!”

To many people, this sounds like some kind of dream job. If you keep a blog yourself (and Google says that a few thousand of us do), then the chances are you’re currently blogging for free, either because you see blogging as a good opportunity to drive traffic to your website, convert traffic that’s already there into sales, or just because you feel you have something to say.

If this sounds like you, then of course you’re going to jump at the opportunity to get paid for something you’d do for free. Who wouldn’t? And if you’re a freelance writer looking for work, you’re probably going to jump at the opportunity to: you write, you make money. What could be simpler?

Well, the paid-to-blog business isn’t quite that simple, unfortunately. You see, you’re technically not being paid to blog. What you’re doing is blogging on someone else’s website, and being given a share of the Google Adsense profits your posts make - in most cases, 50% goes to you, the rest to the web page publisher.

Still sound good? It may well do. After all, on the Internet, content is king. There’s good money to be made from Google Adsense (the program whereby you displays Google adverts on your website and are paid every time someone clicks on them). Isn’t there?

Well yes, there is. But in order to make money from blogging on an Adsense site, you’re going to need to be able to do more than just write. First of all, you’re going to have to be able to identify a niche to write in. This can’t be just any old niche, either: it has to be one which you can churn out content on, day in, day out - and content which people will want to read.

You also have to know how to drive traffic to the content you create. On the paid-to-blog sites, some of the traffic is already there: but in order to make real money from this type of writing, you’ll need even more traffic than that. Where are you going to get it? What do you know about internet marketing? About driving traffic to websites? What do you know about search engine optimisation? You’ll need knowledge of all of these things if you want to make money from blogging - and even if you have that knowledge, you’ll still need the energy and enthusiasm to blog every day.

Say you have all of that. What can you make?

Theorietically, there’s no limit to what you make. There are people out there making a very nice living from blogs and adsense. There are even more people, though, who aren’t making a cent. Realistically, you’re much more likely to fall into that second group.
So, is blogging for money a great freelance writing opportunity?

In a word, no. Blogging networks are great places for people who’d like to make a few dollars per month doing something they’d happily do for free anyway, or for people looking for a lively blogging community to join. They’re not for serious freelance writers who want to make a living wage from their writing.

Still want to make money from blogging? Find a corporate giant who needs someone to maintain their blog - and is willing to pay for it. Save the paid-to-blog network for your free time.

Amber McNaught is the owner of WritingWorld.org, a site which aims to help freelance writers find freelance writing jobs.

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I don’t have a blog other than these articles on www.blog.m6.net which is the blog site of the company that I work for. I’ve started a few, same as I’ve started to keep a diary a few times, but I just don’t stick with them. Perhaps deep down I doubt anyone cares about my day-to-day life, and I’m not anxious to post my deep and intense innermost feelings. I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve, and I don’t want to post it on the Internet.

However, for those of a blogger bent who want to share their lives with others, it’s an excellent idea. You can share your life with the world, letting people on other continents know what it’s like to live where you live, and what it’s like to be who you are. Blogs are good for non-bloggers too, letting people on the other side of an issue, or a war, or the planet, read about what life is like on your side. A few years ago I met a woman with a terrible secret which sounded like some insane conspiracy theory. I tried to organize a blog for her since she wanted to share her information, and because I wanted to hear about any further developments. Sadly, I was unable to set it up that day and subsequently lost touch with her.

Oddly enough, blogs have grown beyond being a window into the blogger’s life, becoming more in the realm of entertainment. A blogger friend of mine won’t be able to write in her blog for two weeks. If it were just a diary she could just say, ‘See you in two weeks’. Instead, she is having two guest bloggers fill in. Isn’t a guest blogger like putting two chapters of someone else’s autobiography in the middle of your own? I assume that the guest bloggers will give a window into THEIR own lives, and I suspect, they’ve already proven themselves to her in their own blogs, so her ‘readers’ could simply read their blogs for two weeks. Clearly blogs are more involved than I realized.

Blogs can make you famous or let you be anonymous. You can vent your concerns about yourself to an anonymous world. Or, you can get help from strangers who may judge you but won’t be able to tell anyone you know what their judgment is. This is of course unless your friends read your blog, which I consider as part of the point of having a blog. Then they will read your venting, and any strangers’ replies to it no matter how judgmental they are. On the other side of the equation, your friends can help without you having to go through the trauma of telling them directly. Plus, any of the strangers reading your blog might notice something wrong that you aren’t aware of. A medical student might tell you what the tingling in the soles of your feet might mean so that you can consult a doctor before it gets more serious. A German housewife might notice that alcohol features more and more in your life, or that you seem to be shifting between joy and sorrow with worrying regularity. More than a window on someone’s life or simple entertainment, blogs are another way to connect with both friends and strangers, anywhere, anytime.

By Allan T. Price
http://www.m6.net
Allan T. Price is a creative writer who has stuck at a 150,000 word novel for two years, but hasn’t stuck at a blog for more than a few days.
Allan T. Price is a creative writer working at M6.Net: ‘The web-hosting company for humans.’ M6.Net is working hard to help humanity experience the power and freedom to develop their own part of the Internet, to share their information and connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime.

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With spam filters on high alert, delivering a newsletter by email is not as easy as it was even one year ago. Should it reach your subscriber’s inbox (without getting siphoned into a junk folder), it still has to vie for attention amongst dozens - or even hundreds - of new messages.

1. A blog is not “email”

A Weblog or blog, on the other hand, is a page on your site that can be updated several times a week with fresh content. If a reader has “subscribed” to your blog, he or she gets an alert (consisting of the headline and brief summary) every time you post new information.

I.e., much the same way you can include a teaser paragraph in your e-newsletter with a link back to the full article on your site.

If you’re thinking that subscribers have to proactively “visit” your blog (a “pull” tactic) vs. having an ezine or e-newsletter delivered to them (a “push” approach) there’s good news.

You can subscribe to a blog using downloadable software called a newsreader. NewsGator www.newsgator.com is a popular one as it integrates seamlessly with Outlook. There are lots of newsreaders to choose from, many of them free. Once installed on your desktop, the newsreader (also called a news aggregator) grabs the latest updates to your blog via an RSS feed.

No need to worry what RSS is (it stands for Really Simple Syndication). Just have faith that RSS is a new way to publish and distribute content on the Web without using email. And that’s the point. No email. So, no worries about spam filters or delivery problems.

2. A blog is an instant publishing tool

A blog is an easy-to-use content management tool. When you “blog,” you are instantly adding new content to your site via a Web interface. No technical or programming skills are necessary. Anyone can update the copy and content on your site. In fact, think of a blog as just another page on your Web site.

Key point: a blog doesn’t have to be “cool.” A steady stream of short tips with links to other sites or articles can be extremely useful. (See my article 5 tips for a useful resource blog.) In fact, this is the same kind of useful information you may be cramming into each issue of your newsletter. With a blog, you can parcel it out in digestible bits - with more impact.

3. A blog makes your site search engine friendly

Search engines love blogs and will index individual entries (no matter how short) if you’ve got your blogging software configured to create a separate page for each new post. In other words, think of each blog post or entry as a Web page with its own title.

By incorporating a blog into your site you are creating multiple new mini pages. Search engines crawl sites which are updated regularly with fresh content. So “blogging” raises your site’s rankings in search results.

OK, but are blogs a fad or a trend?

I love this question. Here’s my answer:

Newsletters or ezines are still the e-vehicle of choice for most marketers. Two things are slowing the adoption of blogs as a channel for business communication:

1. The term blogging is associated with online journals; personal, unedited writing; and, er, needless bloviating.

2. Most folks don’t know what a news reader is and why you need one to subscribe to a blog or any other RSS feed. (Again, don’t fret over RSS. Visit www.newsgator.com for a good explanation and to see how easy it is to download a newsreader.)

Use a blog to extend the reach of your e-newsletter

My advice for now is to continue publishing an e-newsletter. If you’re sending it in HTML, trim your design down to the bare minimum and make the file size as small as possible. This will give you a better chance of getting past the spam filters and other blocking tools being used by major ISPs like AOL.

Of course, don’t forget to link back to your blog through each issue of your e-newsletter. You’ll probably need to explain to your newsletter readers what your blog is, where to find it and how to subscribe to it.

If you think your email subscribers are not ready to embrace “newsreaders,” then don’t mention this downloadable software - or RSS for that matter. Simply include a prominent link to your blog in the layout of your newsletter and remind readers to “visit” often for updates between issues.

Bottom line, consider adding a blog to your site for two reasons: as an instant publishing tool and as an adjunct to your email marketing efforts. You may find you can use a blog to trim down the extraneous information that’s clogging the regular issues of your newsletter and making it less effective.

Useful Resources

Good explanation of RSS

Using RSS Feeds to Promote Your Website by Ralph Wilson

Quick explanation of RSS (from my article “5 key questions about business blogs“)

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