ICT BLOG

Making money through blogging requires a carefully thought out topic. If you have an existing blog with a small audience, be honest when considering whether the topic has broad appeal that isn't already covered by other established bloggers. If it does, great! Otherwise, there's nothing wrong with starting a second blog that will be more successful in attracting an audience, marketing itself, and making money through a variety of methods described below. (Extracted from wikihow)

1. Write down every topic that you are knowledgeable or passionate about. You'll have a much easier time making money from a blog you are interested in, rather than trying to write content you don't like because you think it will make money. Some examples are hobbies that you enjoy, your career, or some specific and miscellaneous knowledge that you have.

·         Some of the most financially successful blogs provide news on a specific topic or targeted to a particular demographic. Mashable, a blog focused primarily on social media news, was founded by a teenager in 2005 and now attracts millions of dollars in investment funding.

·         Many blogs post funny videos and images around a certain topic. Fail Blog is a famous example, posting examples of mishaps, misspellings, and other "stupid" actions. It makes its money primarily through advertising, and now sells a highly successful book as well.^[4]

·         Some blogs are focused on getting paid to provide links to news articles, company stores, or other third party websites. The most financially successful of these range from the Drudge, a blog composed almost entirely of conservative-leaning news links, to Smashing Magazine, a site that provides advice and product reviews to help software developers.^[5][6]

·         Additional common topics covered by the most valuable blogs include business (Business Insider), sports (SBNation), celebrity gossip (Perez Hilton), and music (Pitchfork).

2. Narrow down the topics by reflecting on profitability and other goals. In order to make money, you'll need to find a niche that other people haven't filled already, but is still popular enough to attract a significant number of visitors. Also consider other factors, such as money you'd have to spend if your blog focused on reviewing products that you in turn would have to buy.

·         Choose a specific niche, not a broad topic. Write about training for marathons, not general fitness. Write about making glass jewelry, not arts and crafts.

·         If you want to be famous or reach a wide audience, you will have to choose something slightly broader and work hard to make the best content for that topic. A subtopic relating to fitness, finance, or relationship advice is likely to reach the most people. Consider specific but broadly applicable topics such as managing money in college, or a marriage counseling blog.

3. Search for blogs that cover similar topics. Use a search engine and the search bar on blog hosting sites to find blogs that cover your topic or related topic. Read a few blog posts from the most popular ones, that show up high on the search ranking, have the most comments, or display a readership of 20,000 or more. Get an idea for how much interest and competition there is.

·         If you can't find any popular blogs related to your topic, you probably went tooniche. People interested in a topic will often visit several related blogs, and each blogger can link to the other to direct more traffic to each site.

·         If you find a popular blog that exactly covers your topic, be aware that it will be difficult to compete with them. Try to tweak your topic to a slightly different but related subject, so you complement the popular blogs instead of trying to overtake them.

4.Test how knowledgeable you are about the topic. If you're not sure you have enough to write about, try writing as many article headlines as you can before you create your blog. If you can't think of at least thirty that fit your topic, you should choose something else that you know more about.