About the Blogger "Earnings" tab & Enabling AdSense on your blog

The Earnings tab in Blogger makes it easy to enable AdSense ads on your blog. Once your account has been approved, Blogger retrieves your earnings data so you don't need to visit the AdSense dashboard to access basic earnings information.

AdSense Report

Once you start generating AdSense impressions, you'll begin earning money when people click on ads that appear on your blog. The earnings report (visible when you click the Earnings tab) includes a drop-down bar with Today, Yesterday, Last 7 Days, This Month, and All time.

Selecting an option will retrieve the relevant report directly from AdSense.

All time

If you're an existing AdSense user, you'll notice that Blogger created a new channel (with the URL of your blog) in your account. If you have had AdSense ads on your blog before using Blogger’s AdSense integration to insert ads into your blog, note that All time will retrieve data only from the time you connected Blogger to your AdSense account.

This does not affect your overall AdSense reporting, available directly from AdSense.

Terminology

The AdSense report visible from the Earnings tab contains basic information about how many ads have run on your blog, how many clicks were generated, and how much revenue you've earned. Each term in the report is defined below:

• Page views: A page view is generated every time a user views a page displaying Google ads. We'll count one page view regardless of the number of ads displayed on that page. For example, if you have a page displaying three ad units and it's viewed twice, you'll generate two page views and six ad unit impressions.
• Clicks: The number of times the ads were clicked on in the given reporting period.
• Page CTR (Click-through rate): The number of ad clicks divided by the number of page views.
• CPC (Cost per click): The average amount paid by the advertisers for each ad click.
• Page RPM (Revenue per mille): This is revenue per 1,000 page views. RPM = (Page views x CTR x CPC) / 1,000

Enabling AdSense on your blog

To enable AdSense for your blog, click on the Earnings tab from the drop-down menu on your dashboard.

You’ll then see the AdSense overview page. If you haven’t signed up for AdSense yet, click Sign up for AdSense.

Here is how you can signup for Adsense -

On the next page, select whether you'd like AdSense on the Google Account you're currently signed in to, or if you'd like to create a new Google Account.

Complete the application form, review the information you've provided, and then agree to terms and conditions.

Ads will not appear on your blog until your application has been approved. Once you receive confirmation that your application was approved, you can control the ways the ads show up on your blog through the settings on the Earnings tab at anytime. It’s up to you whether or not to show ads, and where on your blog to display those ads (sidebar and posts, just sidebar, or just posts) if you’re using Traditional templates. Dynamic Views users can skip this step, as Google has already optimized ad placement for Dynamic Views templates.

How To Create Your Own Content for Your Blog

Once you have your blog set up and you have the proper content on it, you need to make sure you keep regular content flowing on the site. There are different ways for you to do this.

First, you need to know where you are getting your content from. You have basically two options: buy or hire someone to write the content or create the content yourself.

Create your own content 

The easiest and cheapest way is to create the content yourself. Blog posts are short (usually 250-500 words) and they don't typically have to be very technical & unless your blog is a technical blog. You can easily create this content for yourself if you have the time. When creating your own content, keep these points in mind:

1. Keep it short & about 250-500 words

2. Start with a catchy title and headline to get their attention

3. Get right to the point with the beginning (you only have a few seconds to catch their attention on  the web)

4. Answer the reader's question of  "What's in it for me?"


Creating your own content is a great way to save money and participate more in your blog project but you shouldn't do it if you are a poor writer or if you take so long getting it done that you are not efficient and can't keep the bog regularly updated. If you are not a writer, there are some other options for you to consider.

Use free content

 

Another option for you to consider if you don't want to write your own is to use free content. There are several different ways to acquire free content for you to use if you know where and how to look. Article directories provide a steady supply of fresh content. You can copy and paste this, or simply have an RSS feed which updates every time fresh content is added to the site. Some of the big article directories are EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com and ISnare.com. There are also many others available for you to use.

Purchase content

 

Another option for you is to purchase original content for your site. You can hire a freelance writer to write articles for you. You can find service professionals on sites such as:

Elance.com

Guru.com

Rentacoder

Etc

Each of these works in the same basic way and will help connect you to a service provider who can do your job for you and usually at a low, affordable price.

Wherever you acquire your content, always watch out for two things:

1. Plagiarism

2. Duplicate content

Plagiarism will cause obvious problems. You should already know the reasons why to not do this. Duplicate content on your own sites can cause you to pay fines or even have your sites/blogs shut down so be careful of this as well.

Things You Should Look Into Before Starting A Blog

Blogging continues to gain in terms of popularity, as one of the best methods in promoting a business, or a way to earn money from the internet. A lot of people get involved with blogging on a daily basis, with the hopes of being able to copy the success of others who are already receiving a lot of money in their bank accounts through their blogs. If you are one of these blogging aspirants, the first critical step you can take is by committing yourself on your goal of getting started with blogging, and the next equally important step is to consider things you should look into before starting your own blog.

Many people who have told their success stories about making money with blogs may have made it sound like this kind of online business is pretty simple to get started with. Although it is true, there are also some challenges you may encounter along the way. Aside from that, you also need to accept the fact that even though this type of money-making venture is done through the internet, similar to offline businesses, it would also require your time, patience, perseverance, and commitment in order to gain success on it and derive substantial monthly income.

In getting started with blogging, you need to know that you have to decide the topic which all your blog posts will be based on. It should be a topic, which you are very familiar with, since you would have to constantly provide updates, to continually attract people in visiting it. The topic can be about your skills, sports, your talent, pets, or any other topic, which you think you can consider yourself an expert of, and at the same time, can attract a good number of people in purchasing certain products.

Aside from considering the topic, you should also ask yourself if you would be willing to write a number of articles for it, in order to provide the blog with content. If you are not, you can actually hire article writers who would provide you with the relevant articles for your site. Just make sure they write quality articles that provide relevant information, since it is one of the key points which attracts people to your blog.

Another thing you need to consider is the type of online business you want your blog to have. You can choose between having companies put their advertisement banners and links to your blog, selling certain items on it, offering services or getting involved with affiliate marketing.

Keep in mind that you have to spend time in deciding which type of the online money-making opportunities you want to get involved with before you start writing in your blog, so that you won"t be wasting your time, and possibly your money in making use of blogs. Once you are done with all these things, you also have to search for a web hosting provider, as well as a blogging website, in order to get started with it.

How do you choose the topic for your blog?

What will your blog be about? How do you choose the topic for your blog? To answer these questions you need to decide what topics you are interested in. What are the things that you enjoy talking about and that you would like to share with others? For instance, if you are a writer, then a blog containing information on writing would be suited for you.

The same is true for any thing that interests you. You can share your lifes events or hobbies that you enjoy. If certain events that are taking place in the world get you stirred up this could be a good topic for your blog. You do however, have to choose a topic so that anyone interested in visiting your blog will know what to expect. Otherwise, very few people may want to waste their time going to a blog when they have no idea what it is about.

After determining the things that interest you, your next step would be to choose the topic from these things that is broad enough to allow you to gather information to have something to talk about. You do not want to make two or three entries then run out of things to say. An example of a good topic would be a network marketer. Someone with this type of blog could write about tips on marketing tools and strategies. They could also talk about marketing software and a number of other subjects related to network marketing. The key is to have a topic that will allow you plenty of material to talk about, but still small enough that you can stay focused on one subject.

Readers come to expect a certain amount of information when they look at your blog. This is why it is important to stay focused on your original topic most of the time. If you begin talking about to many other subjects to often, some of your readers could lose interest and look elsewhere for information. It doesn't hurt to throw something else in there occasionally just to keep things interesting, but for the most part stick to your topic.

Be Creative

Just because we said it is best to stay with your original topic doesn't mean that you cannot experiment a little. There are ways to add zest to your blog while staying focused. For instance, many have found that adding interviews and group projects to their blogs worked really well. You could even invite a lot of people to blog together at the same time. There are a variety of different things that you can try on your blog. You just need to stay open minded enough to give new things a try once in a while. If one thing does not work well, move on to something else. Eventually you will find what works best for your blog to keep your readers interested.

Use Popular Ideas

You can do some background research to see what is popular at this time. Big
ticket topics are always things such as:

How to make money
How to lose weight
How to improve your life (your marriage, your job, etc,)

You can find out about hot topics to include in your blog with some simple and
easy research.

One hot topic is weight loss. This is a very popular topic today. People want to
read about how they can lose a few pounds or get in better shape. Weight loss
topics and techniques are incredibly popular and you can tailor your niche to
things like:


Weight loss for new moms
Weight loss for seniors
Weight loss for the middle aged man
Weight loss after surgery
Weight loss for menopausal women

People are also highly interested in topics that are related to their diet and health such as which foods to eat, great exercises to get desired results, how to supplement a vegetarian diet, etc. You might do reviews and experiments of common weight loss programs, exercise programs, etc. There is just a mass of information to be found on the topic. If it pertains to health and fitness or weight loss, you are probably in the gold.


                Making Money

You can't forget this one! Making money is another very popular one. People love to have more information about how they can make more money. If you can help them find ways to make more money, they will gladly pay the small fee for your e-book. I mean, the potential risk is low and the potential gain very high.

Some examples might be:


 How to make money in real estate
How to make money in the stock market
How to become a day trader
How to avoid common money-making scams
Making money without scams or pyramid schemes

There are many other great topics out there for you to write about. All you need to do is find the topic that will work for your blog and then research from there to keep updated content.

Keeping your blog updated

Once you have your blog set up it is important to keep it updated. No one wants to read the same thing over and over every time they visit your blog. People will get bored and look for something new and fresh. It does not matter when or how often you choose to update, as long as you do it at regular intervals that does not allow too much time to pass in-between. For instance, you can choose to update once a week, twice a week or even every day, whatever is best for you. Just make sure that however you choose to update, you keep it up. Your readers will come to expect the updates at certain times and will be disappointed if you begin to change.

To keep new material coming you need to find new ideas. If you tend to get great ideas whenever it is inconvenient for you to post to your blog, find a way to note these ideas. You can either use a recorder or a note pad to record them. In your free time you can visit other blogs that talk about similar topics to see what hot new ideas are out there.

It is important to keep your blog interesting and to the point. This will help you to have readers that are dedicated to your blog. Many of them will even talk about your blog on their own blog, helping to build your reputation. Make sure that you choose a topic that you really do have a passion for. This will help to ensure that you will be sincere and interesting, which will help to keep your existing bloggers and even increases your viewers. If you are not truly interested in your topic you will not give it the attention it needs to be a real success.

How To Create Blog and Collecting Information for Blogging?

Once you have decided on your topic and niche and identified your keywords, it is time to begin to actually create your blog. Do you know how to begin setting up your blog? You will need to make some decisions about your blog, whether you want a free or paid blog, what your domain name will be, etc.

There are many advantages to a free blog and there is less financial pressure from using a free one but there are also some things you can't do or won't get when you are using a free blog. For this reason, you might choose a paid one to get more options.

Paid blogs are sometimes harder to set up but it depends on what company you are using and what knowledge you have already. If you choose your own domain, you are going to have to choose a domain name as well. You can search online databases to see if the domain name you want is already in use.

1. Choose a name that is easy to spell.

2. Choose a name that is easy to remember.

3. You will probably want to choose a name that pertains to the topic of your
    blog.
4. If not, go with something catchy (i.e. Google, Yahoo, etc)

Once you have chosen your domain name and found a host, you are ready to begin building your blog.


How to use Blogger

1. Go to Blogger.com and set up a new account with a username, password,
    display name and email address.

2. Create a blog for each keyword you have chosen, using the keywords in
    the title and the web address

3. Choose templates and design for your blog.

4. Start posting on your blog (using keywords you have chosen)

5. Enable comments from registered users and backlinks on your blog (if you
    want them.)

Collecting Information for Blog

When you have your blog set up and people start visiting, you are going to want to collect some information from them. This information will help you encourage and motivate them to return to your site and buy your product, use your service, etc.

Building an email list that your visitors can opt in to is one good way to start building and collecting information. You want people to return to your blog so that they will click on affiliate links or ads, buy your products, etc so that you make money. To do this, you are going to have to know what they are interested in reading so you can put it in your blog.

The email list is also a great way to keep them informed of new items, updates and more on your site to bring them back again and again. Be sure you put your subscription box in a great location on your blog so that people can easily see it and subscribe.

Other ways of collecting information is by allowing people to post comments on your blogs and have discussion. You can also post surveys and setup voting polls to find out what people think.

Features of Blogging

When it comes to actually writing and setting up your blog, you need to understand the features of a blog. Knowing and understanding these features can help you understand both what the blog is and how it works. This will help you to understand how people make a lot of money off of it and how you can do the same. Below is an explanation of different parts of a standard blog and the features therein.

Posting Structure

Do you understand the posting structure of the blog and how it works? Each entry is referred to as a post. Posts may also be called entries or articles. They may be made on a daily basis or weekly, bimonthly, monthly, etc. The way you enter your blog post varies according to what type of blog service you are using. Many have a direct entry text box where you simply type in what you want to say. You don't have to know any special coding information. Some blogs have what is called WYSIWYG editors. This stands for "what you see is what you get" and it means easy text entry no matter who you are.

Most blog sites and interfaces have HTML input as well for those of you who enjoy working with code and would like to enter your blogs this way. There are also different formats for listing links, photos, etc. Most work the same way as text. You have the option to either enter as HTML or enter in the WYSIWYG editors.

Interactivity

Another great thing about blogs is that they are interactive. This is one thing that made them so popular. People have the opportunity to respond to what they read. You can post comments to the blog when you read it which are often shown instantly. There are some cases where the blog owner may use a spam filter or blocker and your comment will have to be reviewed first. The comments are usually found at the end of the post. People feel great about the fact that they can add their own thoughts and opinions and communicate with other people that are reading the blog. This is also a great way for advertisers to find out how the readers feel about something.

The archive feature

Archiving is another great feature of blogging. Most blogs have this option so that you can archive your posts by categories  and date. If you find a blog that you like, you can look back on past entries.

 In fact, most blogs have an archive that is searchable for you to easily bring up certain topics or dates and read the entries. The regular blog will have features set up so that after a certain number of days or certain number of blog entries posted, the older entries will roll off the main page and become archived. There are also other features that are usually built into the blog itself such as the ability to subscribe to the content of that blog or excerpts of the blog content. You can also use RSS feeds or Atom feeds to let people know you have updated content or to let them put your content on their sites.

Blogs also have links to other blogs so they all link together, or at least the ones with similar content do. So you can see how great it is for a company or business that wants to get their name out there or make themselves known. It can be very useful to make yourself known with the popular blogs in your topic or category so that you will get advertising to your own as well.

Comparing blogs to websites

You might have already noticed that blogs and websites have several similarities. There are, however, important features that make them different. The way that these sites function is very different. A regular website stays what is called "static". While it may be updated, it is not updated as regularly as blogs. Most of the information and content that is on the website will stay the same. A blog however, may be constantly changing not only on a daily basis but from hour to hour, etc.

Blogs have the bonus of having a permanent web address just like a website but they are different because they are also interactive and very dynamic. The person keeping the blog maintains in conversation with the reader so they feel more in touch with the blogger and the blog. It's more personal than simply reading words on a website.

Blogging in the 21st Century

The turn of the 21st century brought about a lot of changes, including changes in blogging. Technology has given internet users a whole new way to write and present their blogs. Instead of all text with a few images thrown in to make it a little more interesting you can now add audio to your blogs. To make it even more interesting put in a short video to intrigue your visitors.
       
                 Did you know that you can even update your blog when you are on the go if you like? All you have to do is use a PDA or a mobile phone and you can connect and update anytime, anywhere you please, this is called mobile blogs. Technology has certainly changed the way blogging works. There are no longer very many limitations holding the blogger back.
              

                 So what are some of these different types of blogs that are now available today and what do they mean? Basically, there are two common types of blogs and each has different sub-genres included within it. Most blogs are either basic blogs or expository blogs.

Basic blogs include links to something interesting and a comment or two. Expository blogs focus mainly on writing. There are several other types of blogs that fall under these two main broad categories.

Some of these include:

 Group - A variant of the same basic blog but with multiple authors

 Topic- blog writing based on a specific set of topics (such as politics,
news, religion, education, etc.)

 Journals - Diaries; usually expository and of interest to the writer,
family and friends

 Photo- As the name suggests, this is a graphic heavy blog with photos,
etc.

 Linkblog- Similar to the regular basic blog but with only links and
without commentary

 Public relations- blogs geared towards public relations, advertising, etc

 Other- There are many other types and categories of blogs that can fall
in this line as well. There are so many different things that blogs are
used for these days.

Corporate blogging in the 21st Century

As the popularity of blogging has increased, we now also have corporate blogging. Many companies both large and small see this as a great way to connect with their target audience in a more direct way. You can use blogs to find out about your target markets interests, hobbies and concerns.
         

       We live in a time where people want information & tons of information. The more information you can provide, the more confidence there will be in you and your company and your knowledge and abilities. Companies are literally earning millions off of being able to provide others with information. The blog gives you a great platform to be able to achieve this.

         There are even many major companies that are starting to advertise in blogs such as Coca-Cola for one. Advertisers are really taking notice to the popularity of blogs and how they can make money from the information super-highway. You can jump on board and get your share of the profits as well. There is no reason why you shouldn't be making money through a blog as well.

How To Choose Blogging Platform?

When you are ready to begin choosing your blogging platform, there are some questions you can ask yourself to help you decide what you need from a blogging platform.

For example:
1. Do you need something that will be easy to set up and use?
2. Are you new to blogging and new to internet platforms?
3. What is your technical skill level?
4. Are you going to want to change the look of the templates and other
customization?
5. Do you need to have little, moderate or a lot of control over the interface?
6. Will you require spam control features, such as captchas and comment
moderation?
7. Does the platform you are considering offer support and assistance?
8. Do you need to be able to have more than one person able to post the
blog?


These are just some of the questions you might ask. You have to consider your individual situation. Will you need pages on your site that are non-blog pages? What kind of features are important to you? These are all questions to help you choose the right blogging platform for your needs.

Popular blogging programs

You may already know that within each type of blog hosting, there are several different popular blogging programs or platforms, you have probably heard of some of them already and may have even tried some of them already.

Blogger

Blogger is a free hosted blogging tool by Google that has been around for a long time and is very easy to use. Many people make personal blogs on this site and it only takes about 10 minutes to set up your first blog. They have a nice selection of templates but Blogger doesn't allow for a lot of customization.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal allows you to set up online journals quickly and easily. It is a collaboration and networking tool that is great for individuals but makes customization difficult. Again, it depends on what you are trying to do with your blog but if you hope to make money, this might not be your best option.

Textpattern

Textpattern is a free self-hosted tool which works best for those that are good with technology. It is much more customizable that the aforementioned options and it has wizard based interface to make this easier for you. It also uses custom formatting.

Typepad (hosted)/ Moveable Type (self-hosted)

Typepad was created by SixApart and is the hosted version of their popular MoveableType platform. These are both options for you to consider depending on your specific needs. Typepad is a paid blogging platform but it is still relatively affordable. There are different levels of access that will affect the price ranging from Basic to Pro.

Wordpress

Wordpress is both hosted and self hosted, depending on what your needs are. Wordpress is free and is easy to setup and use. There are hundreds of plugins to extend functionality in different areas. This is by far one of the most popular options around today.

Here is a list of some popular blogging platforms which bloggers can install on
their own servers:

1.  b2evolution
2.  bBlog
3.  blosxom
4.  ExpressionEngine
5.  Drupa
6.  Greymatter
7.  LifeType
8.  Movable Type
9.  Nucleus CMS
10.  Radio UserLand
11.  Roller Weblogger
12.  Serendipity
13.  Subtext
14.  Textpattern
15.  Windows Live Writer
16.  WordPress

Here is a list of some popular blogging services, which bloggers can use with no
installation.

1.  Blog.com
2.  Blogger
3.  LiveJournal
4.  Open Diary
5.  TypePad
6.  Windows Live Spaces
7.  Wordpress.com
8.  Xanga

You have to decide for yourself which platform you think will meet all of your needs the best. So what should you look for while selecting a platform?