First of all, if you want people to tip you for your blog, you have to give them a reason for doing it. You need to be providing very good information or highly entertaining copy that makes them feel like you earned it. In essence, you are the web equivalent to a street performer by working for tips. So, like that street performer, you owe your audience something that makes them feel like you are worth their money. So polish your writing, update it often, keep it fresh, and stay true to the topics your readers are used to. If you are all over the place, you won’t be able to build the loyal audience necessary when you go to start asking for tips. Basically, the start of it all is your content. Just like with any other money making web venture, your content is going to go a long way. So to get started earning tips from your blogging, make sure you give the audience a reason.

Once you have your content set up, you need to promote it. Asking for tips won’t do you a bit of good if you don’t have an audience to ask. Market your blog, market your topics, and target those search engines. Don’t do any of it at the expense of the quality of your content, but make sure you are getting something going in the way of marketing. Register with blog directories, post to other people’s blogs, and generally get your name and blog site out there so that you will drive an audience into what is hopefully quality, informative, and or entertaining content. Again, if there is nobody at the site then asking for a tip is not going to do you a lot of good.

Next, since you have set up your content to be useful and entertaining to a particular audience and you have begun to get your blog marketed, you are almost ready for those tips. However, there needs to be some sort of vehicle available to your readers to get the tips to you. I mean if they have to do a lot of work to get money to you then you probably shouldn’t count on the money rolling in. There are a number of online methods available for receiving payments via email or the web. It would be wise to have one located prominently on your blog so that if a reader is stuck with the desire to tip you, he or she can do so with ease and without a lot of time that may result in rethinking the tip. Remember, this is something you want to happen when your quality and entertainment is fresh in their minds.

Finally, if you really want to earn tips from blogging, then you should probably ask for them in some way. You can do so in the blog posts or even with some sort of message on the main page of your blog that states that tips are appreciated and are the way you fund the blog. Either way, you need to make it clear to the readers that you are reliant on their generosity without sounding like you are hard selling, or worse, begging.

Blogging can be a lot of fun, and can actually make you a little money if you are willing to work hard at it. One way of making that money is by earning tips from your readers. There are some things that you need to get in place though to make that work. Make sure you have quality content, market your site, set up a method for receiving the tips, and be sure to ask for them. If you do those things, then you can be earning tips from your blog before you know it.

Done with that, then it’s about building the site, putting web pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.

After that, you go around looking for link partners.

I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in case for some newbie readers, I’ll try to explain what it is. A blog is a site that contains articles after articles written one after the other. The content is not being written all in one go upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.

For one thing — it’s easier to get incoming links. Let me tell you how.

Reason #1: Blog Ping

First of all, there’s this thing called – PING. With a blog ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just updated your blog. When you do that, you’ll get a link back to your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and MoreOver, also have ping addresses.

Now, maybe you won’t be listed very long on that page, because many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or less, it’ll help. I’ve gone through my web statistics and traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.

Reason #2: Trackback

Secondly, there’s also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I’ll tell you. With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a unique URL for it. And for each article, there’s also a unique trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person’s blog, look for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.

Now here’s how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at somebody else’s blog. And he just wrote about something about cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to say about what he wrote — and you know, what you want to say will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the interface, you enter the other guy’s trackback URL, and then you hit the Submit button.

Reason #3: Blog Comments

Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site — Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even leave a link back to your site. But here’s the thing, just make sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there are too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link back.

Reason #4: Bloggers’ Linking Habit

OK, here’s some more. This is more a blogging culture thing — bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is interesting, it’s easy to get other bloggers to link back to you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they just simply give you a link back. I’ve got this many times, and most of the times, they link back write to a specific message. And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on their website.

Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing

This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it’s easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because incoming links are more natural and you don’t really go around asking for them. And when the incoming links are more natural, I think search engine will prefer it a lot more.

Reason #6: Repeat Visitors

Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites, and other blogs, later you’ll start to realize that 80-90% of your visitors are repeat visitors. It’s common with a blog. So the point is with this one — it’s easier to retain visitors with a blog.

Blogging Seems Much More Fun …

In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing 100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog, it’s not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day, provided you give good content.

But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable with.

Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future — but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it, blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like, and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less link building, etc …

People looking for an alternative source of information will find that blogs can sometimes offer a more in depth view or a refreshing take on current events. One of the major benefits of information from blogs, specially from personal, cultural and political bogs, is that it gives readers insight on the locals’ viewpoint. For example, although news sites can offer accurate information and report facts and statistics about important events such as the 9/11 attack or the latest Tsunami tragedy that hit Asia, personal blogs of people who were actually there or knew someone involved in the tragedies offer a deeper and more compelling insight on the events. Reading political blogs would also give you a chance to know what ordinary citizens of a country really think.

The downside with information from blogs is accuracy. Since most blogs are subjective, information garnered from the blogs can be lopsided and even exaggerated. Most blogs do write about facts but give commentaries as well. When reading opinions and commentaries be discriminating and do not believe everything written without thinking or checking out the facts by reading other blogs and sources.

One problem with extracting useful information from blogs is knowing where to start. With more than 10 million blogs online it is impossible to search for specific information without the help of a good blog search engine. A good blog search engine, however, will weed out most of the noise and point you to the blogs that contain the information you need.

To help you search for information found in blogs, here’s a short list of the best blog searching tools on the net right now.

•    Google blog search – google blog search is the fastest blog search engine at the moment and returns incredibly relevant search results.
•    Technorati.com – Technorati.com is the most established blog search engine. It gives back the most number of results and has the most features among blog engines. However, it can be slow and returns quite a number of irrelevant links.
•    Yahoo! Blog Search – Yahoo’s blog search is a new feature added to its news search. The search result page is divided into two columns with the left column containing news results and the right column containing blog results. Yahoo! blog search is best for people who need current information but are not very particular that it be from blogs.
•    Feedster is one of the oldest blog engines. One of its useful features is that it caches blog pages. Feedster would be useful for people looking for blog posts that have been deleted or edited.
•    BlogPulse is a search engine most useful due to its extra tools that allow users to do things other blog engines don’t like create graphs and plot log buzz for search terms. It also has a Conversation Tracker that’s gathers related blog posts converts them to threaded conversations. This cool feature allows readers to follow topics they are interested in more easily.
•    And to apply for a Blog Review and possibly win an award, go to Bloggy Award!

Start with the news! Open up your favorite news page or open a newspaper and see what catches your attention. What are the politicians up to today? Any pending legislation that worries you or flat out scares you? Or perhaps someone is running for office or proposing a law that you may want to publicly support. Some celebrity is sure to be in trouble again; have anything to say about that? Maybe you have an idea about who should be dating or marrying who. Who died? A nice memorial post for a nice person may be in order. What happened “On This Date” in past years? Some past events are worth researching and writing about. Are you into sports? Many bloggers or blog readers are sports fans and they might be interested in your take on the playoffs or the players. Don’t forget to check the editorial page and the letters to the editor — do you agree with the opinions? Tell the world why or why not.

Read some blogs! Start surfing your favorite blogs. What are they talking about? You might have a different perspective on the latest hot topic that might just be interesting to your fellow bloggers or a perspective that might make them mad (BTW, never worry about making bloggers mad — most of them love having something to gripe about). If you can’t find anything that inspires you in your favorite blog, surf through some of those blogs that always make you mad; the ones that seem to promote everything that goes against your lifestyle. Anger is always a good blog motivator but don’t get so angry you get irrational. Comment on some blog posts and then expand your comments into a post on your blog. Also try logging onto Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker or one of the many other blog traffic generator programs — there are lots of ideas out there that are worth writing about from either a pro or con perspective.

What have you been doing? Your work place, your co-workers, you bosses, your home and your family members are all fair game for your blog — keep it short and amusing and you’ll have a great post. Once you introduce a particularly interesting person to your readers you may want to do some sequels. When was your last travel vacation — write a travelog about where you’ve been or do some research on some places you’d love to go to and write about them.

Topic selection is at the very root of blogging success.  The idea is to choose a topic area in which you can be competitive.  Optimally, you can find a blogging niche that is underserved yet has a high level of interest.  This will allow you to attract a great deal of visitors more easily which, of course, translates into higher profit levels.

There are a few factors to consider when choosing the subject area for a “money blog.”  First, one may want to attempt to find a subject area in which they have a personal interest, especially if they plan on writing their own content.  This is because successful blogs require regular updates and it can become difficult to regularly produce quality information if one has no real interest in a topic.  If someone opts to hire a writer to produce their blog posts, however, this is a far less important factor.

Second, one should strive to find a topic area in which interest is at least relatively high.  You may be able to rule the search engines on the topic of “17th century wooden paperweights,” but there are so few, if any, people with an interest in the subject.  Thus, that number one ranking in Google will not produce the kind of traffic stream you will need to turn a healthy profit.  It may be more difficult to enter a more competitive marketplace, but the potential rewards are far greater, too.  The key to this element of topic selection, however, is not just writing a blog on a hot topic.  It is finding a field from which a healthy number of visitors can be culled.

Third, one will want to find a market that is underserved.  Basically, you are looking for a strong disparity in the number of interested parties and the amount of readily available information.  If you can find a topic in which many people are interested but that is not well-covered online, you will be sitting upon a potential blogging gold mine.  It is perfectly acceptable to build a wonderful blog and to expend the effort to compete in a more crowded area, but this does require much more work.  Finding an underserved niche and filling a hole in the marketplace is a much easier way to produce blogging revenue.

Choosing a topic for your moneymaking blog can be a challenging process.  This first step, however, is probably one of the most important.  The choice of a topic not only establishes the nature of the blog, it also (in large measure) determines its potential for success.

Probably not. Sure, you’ll get listed with the search engines easily. But without a top twenty listing at one of the majors (Google, Yahoo! or MSN), you won’t have traffic, literally, banging down your door.

In order to get better search engine results you need to make sure you are using the right keywords (and know how to use them), have links pointed your way and regularly check the results of your hard work. Here’s how.

Putting Keywords in the Right Places

Once you’ve picked a keyword that applies directly to your blog, make sure to incorporate it into the following portions of one complete blog posting:

# The title;
# The first sentence;
# Each header (if you have any);
# Once a paragraph; and
# The last sentence.

If you have any links to outside sources, use the same keyword as your link text where possible. Also, for each blog posting, try and pick a different (but related) keyword to use. Feel free to reuse keywords every 30-45 postings.

Submitting to Directories

Your third step is to take these keyword optimized blog postings and post them to the article and blog directories. Most of the search engines determine the relevancy of your blog by how many outside websites link directly to you; therefore, posting your blog entries (with a link back to your site in your resource blurb) is an easy and straightforward way of doing so.

Checking Your Progress

It may take a couple of days to see any results, so try and wait a week before you take a look at StatCounter. Have your hits increased at all? Are there any new search engine referrals?

To track your blog’s ascent up the search engine rankings for any given keyword, try Digital Point’s free Keyword Tracker Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/). It is an excellent way of ensuring your blog positioning efforts are paying off.

With all blog postings, content is key. Without useful, interesting information that cannot be found elsewhere, your visitors won’t come back for more. Incorporate these simple search engine optimization techniques into your blogging practice however, and you’ll both keep the visitors you already have and dramatically increase your readership through high ranking search engine placement in no time.

1. Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by http://TNL.net

2. Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3. Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4. Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5. Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6. Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7. Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8. Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9. Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”

10. Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11. Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12. Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13. Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14. Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15. Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like http://Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

A second challenge is the time to blog. I work while blogging so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.

These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.

Ideas to use when copying are:

1 – attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.

2 – look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.

3 – You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.

4 – I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).

5 – The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is www.isnare.com.

6 – In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on www.brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.

In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.