How To Blog for Dollars!

I was bragging a bit lately about blogging and making a few bucks. I'm still learning the ropes but I figured I'd take my own advice and write what I've learned so far, and if you as a reader know some stuff I don't then comment away!

I'll make the post by way of a list and basically make it chronological for memory sake:

• 18 months ago I heard of these "blogs" and asked my staff and people under 30 what they were. Actually very few people knew. They knew myspace but they really didn't see much of a business idea. Well there is one. There's a big one! After some research I found that www.blogger.com will let you host a blog free and you can write every day or multiple times a day. Why? Great question, could be a journal, could be a list of thoughts, could be a series of ideas that others bounce around, could be advice ... it's you and that makes it custom to you.
• Now the next step in my education was when I read somewhere that blogs, there are about 60 million right now, are suitable for search engines. Due to the fact that they feature regular input and lots of information that is custom they search really well. If you write a blog about Bonita Springs Real Estate, and the information in that blog changes often and features photos and links, then you will search pretty high.
• In November I bumped into www.activerain.com and signed up right away. Man, have I learned a lot there. First, when you blog on active rain, you generally help push active rain up the search engines. So, if you blog about Bonita Springs Real Estate on active rain, and point your links to your website and your "other blog" then you get the benefit of active rain's rankings. So every time I wrote a post on active rain, I linked to my outside blog and to my company website. We immediately saw a 14% increase in traffic.
• While on active rain I ventured to the blog dashboard. Lo and behold there's a link to "Most Subscribed" bloggers. These are the top 40 or 50 people of the 16,000 on active rain that post and are read by others. Yowee, I began to read things about Search engine optimization and links and rankings that I'd never even heard of. So I would highly recommend subscribing to my blog there and to a bunch of those highly ranked people. Typically if you subscribe they will subscribe to you as a favor too. The more you blog there the more readers and comments. Again pushing you up the rankings.
• Links - Generally every website and every blog should feature links to other websites and blogs that you host and to other blogs and websites that you venture to often. I will feature you if you send me all your links. Please set up links to all my sites too:
• http://synergyhomes.blogspot.com
• http://reasonbellpundit.blogspot.com
• http://bangaloreindiatrip.blogspot.com
• http://daltonsbriefs.blogspot.com
• http://www.synergyhomes.com
• http://activerain.com/blogs/synergysteve

(More later today)