10 Commandments of Money Maker Blogs

Disclaimers: The Monetizer is not God. The Monetizer does not worship money.

A saying that Monetizer has heard before is "Do as I say, not as I do". This reigns supreme as you stop by this blog, which as noted before is an all-out experiment in money making. The blog is on Blogger, a free blogging service, but Monetizer wants to move on up, if you catch his drift. The Monetizer will hope to one day move off this basic Blogger platform into the higher realm, of self-hosted Wordpress blog sites with stylish designs. However, the Monetizer has been taking notes over the past year of blogging, learning from mistakes and successes.

Check out these 10 blog commandments below, which the Monetizer presents to those who want to make a serious foray into the business of blogging for money:

10 Commandments of Money Maker Blogs

1) Thou shall have your own blog/site hosted. If you want to get serious with your blog or website to make money, make sure you have a great domain name and have it hosted on your own website. Blogger, Wordpress and other sites have great free platforms, but they will never provide you the true flexibility you need on their basic free versions.

2) Thou shall use Wordpress. Use Wordpress rather than Blogger for your blogging software (it's the way to go if you have your own hosting). Blogger is great for a free start up, but Wordpress offers you a ton more flexibility once you're on your own site. It basically helps you create and mold your site, and has some great plug-ins as well. WordPress is currently at Version 2.3 as of this post. Wordpress can be downloaded here.

3) Thou shall not deprive readers of ways to keep updated. Make sure you give your readers a way to subscribe to your blog, both by email and RSS feed reader links. Use Feedburner.com and its many features to do so.

4) Thou shall accept comments on your blog. These provide you a way to see reader's thoughts on your topics, collect feedback and even use it for future material to blog on. Responding back to the comments lets your readers have a sense of connection and feel as if they are part of a community environment. Consider a reader a customer, so comments are their ultimate tribute to your work.

5) Thou shall comment in other areas wisely. There's a good way to promote and an evil way. Examples of bad ways of commenting include blatant spam, not even referring to the post topic you comment on, or just plain poor grammar and spelling. Act in good faith and judgement when commenting forums or other blogs. The "hey cool blog, check out my link" won't cut it and won't make any friends in the blogosphere.

6) Thou shall explore and use the benefits of social media. Myspace, Facebook, Orkut, Gather, Squidoo, etc etc. These sites can all provide you with free internet real estate to promote on and help you connect and network with an audience for your topic. Additionally, they can provide you a pulse of what's hot within your niche.

7) Thou shall measure your site's success. Have a way to measure your sites visits/traffic. Google Analytics is recommended. It will tell you traffic levels, locations of visitors (on a nice map), search engine terms that brought people to your blog and more.

8) Thou shall network with other bloggers in your niche topic. This can only help you grow your blog's success as other bloggers may possibly show you link love or refer to a post you made. Challenge a fellow sports blogger to a NFL sunday football prediction showdown. Then each blogger blogs about the picks. Offer to be a guest blogger or ask for a blogger to guest on yours. There's many possibilities here to befriend and work with "your competition".

9) Thou shall learn and harness SEO. A very important commandment, you must strive to make your blog as search engine friendly and popular as possible. Learn the techniques of Search Engine Optimization. Otherwise do not expect search engine traffic or much money to be made. SEOMOZ.org makes for a good resource with tools and articles to help you with SEO.

10) Thou shall constantly strive to improve your efforts. Reinvest money made into your blog/site. Constantly tweak design aspects and research ways to promote. Look into new ways to promote, learn new tools you can use to increase productivity. Doing these things will work to make your blog a better business.

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There are a few of the above commandments which Monetizer fully admits to breaking, namely #1 and #2. The reason the blog is currently done on Blogger is in a nutshell it is absolutely free and allows for using multiple types of ads. Wordpress doesn't allow Adsense on its free platform, it must be hosted before you can do your own thing. Wordpress frowns on affiliate and referral links as well. However, Wordpress is the best choice once a bit of money has been earned and hosting can be purchased. Once your blog is hosted on a your own site, you can do with it as you choose and Wordpress offers full power.

In addition to the above, right now the Monetizer has shifted focus from promoting this blog to more promotion of the Make Money with The Monetizer Squidoo page, another experiment in moneymaking. :)

Remember that if you are trying to make money with your blog, that makes it like your full or part-time business. To grow that business takes dedication and hard work. Feel free to use the 10 commandments above as your guide for building a better blog as your business. Commandments #9 and #10 are especially important to always practice, as they will provide you with constant improvement and help you to make your blog the best moneymaker it can be.