Adsense and blogging is the perfect way for a beginner to get started with earning money from Adsense. Blogs are extremely simple to set up and maintain, with the only other ingredient being quality, unique and sincere content. I say sincere because you want your readers to return. If your readers get the gist that you are blogging simple for money, they will quickly turn the other way. So evidently it is logical your blog should be based on a topic or niche that you are knowledgeable and passionate about. Blog for passion and the money will follow. Yes it’s that easy to make money – now to the logistics!

Types of blog software

When it comes to blogs, WordPress is the word that most often comes up. WordPress is, in my opinion, the easiest and most productive blog software you can use. In most cases, it will require your own web host and domain (this is inherently better than using a free blog service, although that has its benefits which I will get to in a moment). WordPress is free, and is also bundled with web hosting providers who use Fantastico – meaning you can install WordPress with just a few mouse clicks.

Moveable Type is another fully fledged blogging platform however it comes at a cost of $49.95 for one year of use.

When it comes to free services, Google’s Blogger is the monopoly. WordPress also offer their own blog hosting, however personally I prefer the Blogger interface and the fact that Blogger blogs seem to be favored by Google. The upside to using a free blogging platform is obviously, the cost, or lack thereof. It’s nice to have everything for free, don’t you agree? As is often the case with freebies, there are downsides. That being the fact that Blogger or WordPress etc can at any time, simple delete your blog. This is a common occurrence, so don’t make the mistake of not backing up your blog posts, do it regularly and religiously!

Adsense blog plugins

My favorite WordPress Adsense plugin is Adsense Deluxe. The official description of this plugin is “Embed Adsense in your blog posts and make global changes to ad styles from an intuitive (options) control panel. Includes Adsense Preview tool to see what ads would display on a page.”

Quite simply, every WordPress blogger should be using Adsense Deluxe.

Integrating Adsense in to your blogs is not something that should be done carelessly or without thought. Will advertisements add value to your blog? If so, go ahead and insert one or two Adsense blocks. Test, track and experiment with the various positions and types of Adsense ad units in your blogs and you will surely see some revenue trickle in. If you already have a popular blog, there is no doubt that on topic Adsense advertisements will yield clicks, especially when placed at the end of an interesting post – you will be surprised at just how well a tightly targeted ad can perform.

Good luck bloggers and I wish you all the best with your blogging endeavours!

Blogs are very easy to set up compared to a regular website. This is because a blog is basically a content management system which allows you to simply log in and publish your articles to your website. You can do all this without knowing the first thing about website coding or graphic design.

Some popular blogging platforms are:

WordPress

Typepad

Blogger.com

WordPress.com

The last two mentioned there are online services. That is, Google (Blogger) or WordPress host your blog for you and give you a subdomain on their domain. This is good if you want to test out a niche or drive traffic to one of your websites. This service is totally free.

WordPress is my blogging platform of choice. The personal version that is, not the hosted version. You can usually install WordPress through Fantastico in your web hosting account.

So once your blog is up and running, how do you make money from it? Here are a few methods:

Adsense

Sign up for a Google Adsense account and immediately have ads showing on your site. Google can match ads to your content and pay every time someone clicks on an ad.

List Building

You can insert some code on your site which captures the email addresses of people who want to subscribe to your mailing list. You need a list manager for this. I recommend Aweber.com.

What’s the point of this? Well, you can email your list on a regular basis with offers they may be interested in, and include your affiliate link so you get paid if anyone buys. Once your list builds up into the hundreds or thousands, this is the BEST way of giving yourself regular income.

Blogs are easy to set up, but you need content to maintain them. Make sure you are writing, or purchasing, unique content on a regular basis. The more content you have, the more the search engines and the visitors will love your blog. That can only mean more earnings for you!