Blogging is a popular way to generate income working at home. The essence of this business model: select a topic, write about it, cover it properly and collect advertising dollars.

As with any other business it takes time to learn and improve your skills in blogging, but it can be very rewarding. In this post I will cover the steps required to start and grow your blogging business.

1. Niche or topic selection. What are you going to write about? Here you should keep in mind both parties: yourself (you should be familiar with the topic) and the readers (they should find something in your blog, otherwise they will not read it). This should help you with your topic research:

• Alexa Top 100
• Google Answers: see what people pay for
• AssociatePrograms.com: check new programs
• Check stats at http://www.clickz.com/stats/
• Websites for sale: topics, traffic & revenue details
• WordTracker.com reports: what people search
• Check forum sections: need services/ will buy
• eBay.com What’s Hot
• Shopping.com consumer demand index; MySimon top searches (1000)
• 7Search.com top paying keywords
• Investigate affiliate networks
• Study high paying keyword lists
• Amazon: hot selling books (topics) and products
• ClickBank.com: subscribe to Affiliate Alert
• Find niche forums: explore FAQ, user’s signatures in posts
• Yahoo! Buzz Index, AOL Search: hot searches monthly, Lycos hot 50
• Google Zeitgeist
• Picks.yahoo.com/picks
• Del.icio.us (most popular tags), Slashdot.com, Digg.com: angles/ buzz/ trends
• Blog Buzz Index (search for stories rapidly propagating through blogs): www.technorati.com/pop/news/, www.blogpulse.com/trends.html
• Feedtser top 500: www.top500.feedster.com/
• Bloglines.com

2. Get a cheap domain name and hosting for your blog.

• I would recommend to check www.godaddy.com and www.moniker.com to acquire a domain name and hosting
• Mosr popular and free blogging software: WordPress, MovableType, Blogger.com, TypePad, bBlog, Nucleus

3. Blog promotion – the hardest part. You need to build a stream of traffic to your blog that will help earn your adv dollars. Your blog is new so do not expect much free traffic from the top search engine – Google (due to its ‘sandbox’ effect). You should focus on other traffic techniques. Hopefully this will help:

• PPC (pay-per-click search engines)
• Del.icio.us & other social networking websites – add your blog posts weekly
• Much good content
• Many quality links
• Viral marketing
• Press releases. Find angles monthly.
• Tests for $ (buy links; sites; expired domains; directory listings)
• e-Mail marketing
• Adv in e-zines
• Focus on getting FREE traffic from Yahoo!, MSN, other SE
• Return, loyal visitors: give a number of reasons to come back
• Adv at the related forums (where it is allowed): in your signature – the link to your blog
• Banner adv
• Classifieds (incl. Craigslist).
• Award sites in your niche (top 100 sites, top 10 sites, etc)
• Mega traffic mega quick: try to get your posts featured on the 1st page of www.bored.com, www.digg.com, www.slashdot.org, www.shoutwire.com, www.ebaumsworld.com, www.fark.com)
• Alexa top 100 most trafficked sites: need to discover ways to get your tiny traffic stream from them:

4. Monetization. What are the ways to collect money for all your efforts? It depends on the topic, but some combination of the below methods is a good approach:

• CPC – cost per click (top players: Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher Network, Chitika)
• CPA – cost per action (top players: Commision Junction, LinkShare, Shareasale, ClickBank)
• CPM – cost per impression (top players: TribalFusion, Casale, FastClick, BurstMedia)
• Link sales (top players: AdBrite, linkworth.com, linkadage.com, textlinkbrokers.com, text-link-ads.com)

5. An extra step (bonus): best resources that properly cover all described steps and help to be current on the development of blogosphere:

Problogger.net
Performancing.com

Just research each step and make blogging model a nice income generation business to enjoy.

[tag]blogging, blog, home businesss, home job, home income, self-employment, affiliate income, blog software, affiliate programs, website traffic, website marketing, promotion[/tag]

People make decision to start their own home business due to a vast list of reasons: someone wants to try ‘an independent way’ to earn for living, someone has no much choice as he/ she has to look after the baby, someone is so desperate with job search that decides to go solo, etc.

Decision to start your own business, no doubt, involves much thinking and consideration.

The advantages of home business are:

-         stay at home all day

-         plan your flexible work schedule

-         work in a more productive way (not distracted by meetings, unwanted phone calls, etc)

-         save money on car gas, lunches, clothes

-         save time (trips to the office and back)

-         have no boss teaching you how to do things in a proper way

-         have more time for your family and kids

-         etc

Disadvantages include:

-         feel unsafe and more pressure as you do not have outside income sources, but the same amount of bills to pay

-         get more introverted and feel uncomfortable about any kind of social life

-         feel hard to control the work flow and can extend your working days to 10-14 hours

-         get distracted with some home work

-         etc

You should make sure 100% that you are ready to start your own business. You need to positively reply to these questions:

• Can you get along with other people?
• Are you a leader?
• Can you take charge of things?
• Are you prepared to work hard and extra hours for something you want?
• Do you have some financial back up for t least 6-8 months once you quit your job (if you have one)?
• Are you ready to get over failures?
• Are you good at making decisions?
• Can people trust what you say?
• Are you a healthy person?

If your replies are positive (at least, to most of them) you can give a try to start your own business. But what about home business? It is a specific kind of business not good for every entrepreneur. A new list of questions that requires affirmative replies on your part:

• Are you well-organised?
• Are you self-motivated?
• Can you set and stick to your own timetable?
• Are you sufficiently self-disciplined?
• Are you familiar with time management? Do you have time-management skills?
• Can you work alone with no one to talk to, to help you, to share with?
• Can you set goals for yourself, stick to them and make any changes?
• Is there a room in your home to set up as your office with a few things to distract you?
• Do you have the equipment necessary to operate an office?
• Are you an introvert or extrovert?

Please follow our posts where we will continue to discuss the issues of setting up your own home business: risks involved practical steps to start your business, what it takes to become successful.

[tag]home business, home job, freelance, self-employment, business, [/tag]

Well, as a way to extend the market of search for your home based business opportunities you can go international. Internet and international payment processors to get your earned money (i.e. PayPal operates in many countries worldwide) make it trouble free.

Yes, I realize that there are some issues you should resolve from the start. And yes, the degree of risk to run into some sort of scam is higher than normal. But in my opinion the idea is worth to explore.

Market is really global: you can search for home business opportunities in the USA, Canada, Australia, UK, India (see below example), Ireland, New Zealand. And it is just in case you know one language – English.

I have made one minute research and the first result was the below job opportunity from some company located in India. India enjoys one of the fastest growing economies in the world. Their GNP will be bigger than US in a couple of years. So, that is the reason why I added the country to the below list where to search for home business possibilities. India also has a high per cent of English speaking population and highly developed IT industry. But the choice is yours and you can custom the list of the countries where you will focus your search of job opportunities.

Description: Work from home part time or full time. # Job opportunity, which can lead you higher level of success, earning and great achievements. # No prior experience required. #Build a profitable job locally or nationally. #Also earn bonus and incentives by working more efficiently. #The thing you have to do is just type ads. # Every member will be given few ads to be typed and posted on online. TO BECOME A SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE YOU HAVE TO FILL A JOINING FORM. FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE E-MAIL AT:e.job116 [at] rediffmail.com SO HURRRRRY TO MAKE YOUR LIFE A TRUE SUCCESS.

PHP experience: 0-1 year

Other skills: required a good typist who has a sound knowledge about internet applications.

Job Type: Permanent , Part-time

Annual Salary: From $10000 To $15000

Company info: ejobs4all.com

Contact name: Rajat Roy

Entered: May 15, 2006

One more website that is likely to help you is this one that lists 1000’s of international search engines. It is obvious that you should target local search engines to spot home jobs.

[tag]International home business idea, home business idea, home based job, international job[/tag]