The prime objective of most people (except a few insane ones) who comes to this wonderful online world is to make or earn some money online. There are many ways to make money online and this post – “How To Start A Blog And Make Money Online” will give you an insight into one of the most potent and popular ways to make money online – Blogging. For those who are new to this online world and don’t have a clear idea of what a blog is please read – “What Is A BLOG” to get a clear idea so that it becomes easy to follow this post. This post will give a clear idea on “How to start a blog?” and “How to make money with a blog?” so go get yourself a cup of coffee and sit back as I take you through this pleasant trip of how to earn decent money online – Blogging.

If you want to make money online with a blog then naturally at first you must have a blog. Here are the steps that you need to go through to start a blog :-

1. Choose A Niche (Topic) – Before you start a blog you need to choose on what niche you will start a blog. You can also start a blog with no particular niche or topic and write on all sorts of topic that you want but if you are serious and your aim is to make money with your blog (which I’m sure is the case with you) then you must start a niche blog because niche blogs do much much better in terms of making money. Choose a topic which you are at least familiar with and which is quiet popular and is widely searched for on the Internet. The topic should be highly searched for because that shows a lot of people are interested in the topic so there is the possibility of getting a large volume of traffic which is directly proportional to the amount of money you can earn from your blog. Blogs make money mainly from advertisements so More Traffic = More Advertising Money. Read my post – How to choose A Profitable Niche (Topic) for Your Blog ? where I have explained each and every aspect in more details which will definitely help you in choosing a profitable niche to start a blog.

2. Choose A Domain Name – This is the address that you type in the address bar of your browser to reach a blog or website. For example the domain name of my blog is “http://www.makemoneyonline24hrs.com/”. Go through my post – “How To Choose A Domain Name” to know what are the factors you need to consider when you choose a domain name.

3. Choose A Blogging Platform – After you have chosen your blog topic and domain name now you need to choose a blogging platform. There are three options available :-

•    A Free Blogging Platform like Blogger, WordPress, Typepad etc with the domain name as their sub-domain like “YourDomainName.blogspot.com for Blogger”, “YourDomainName.wordpress.com for WordPress” and “YourDomainName.typepad.com for Typepad” etc. This is a completely free option in which you don’t have to pay either for the domain name or for the hosting.

•    A Free Blogging Platform with a ‘Custom’ or ‘Purchased’ domain name in which your domain name will appear in place of the sub-domains as above. My blog is an example of this type where I am using the custom domain “MakeMoneyOnline24hrs.com” with the free blogging platform “Blogger” from Google.

•    A Full Paid Option where you need to pay for the ‘Domain Name’ and also for the ‘Hosting’.

You can visit my post – “How To Choose The Right Blogging Platform” to get all the required details on choosing a blogging platform.

4. Choose A Title For Your Blog – This is the name of your blog. For example the name of this blog is “Online Money Making” (I can change this later). Include the keywords related to your niche in your blog title to make the title search engine friendly so that you can get free traffic from search engines. Read the post – “How To Choose A Blog Title” to know the details.

5. Your Blog Is Ready – Start posting good unique and informative content. Update your blog with fresh content as frequently as possible.

Now that your blog is ready its time to know how to earn money from your blog. As I have already mentioned in the starting that blogs mainly earn money from advertising revenue so its quiet obvious you need traffic or visitors to your blog to earn advertising revenue. More traffic = More Money. Also all the other ways that you can make money from your blog other then advertising also depends directly or indirectly on your traffic volume.

There are many sources to get traffic and here is the list of the most popular and effective ways to get traffic to your blog :-

1. Search Engines – Read – How To Increase Blog Traffic From Search Engines ?
2. Social Bookmarking Sites
3. Forums
4. Article Marketing
5. Blog Commenting and Guest Posts in other blogs.
6. Paid Advertisements like Adwords
7. Being active on social media sites like MySpace and FaceBook etc
8. Twitter
9. Blog Directories and Blog Search Engines like Technorati and Blogcatalog etc.
10. Publish niche related Videos on YouTube, MetaCafe etc.
11. Participate in Blog Carnivals through BlogCarnival.com.
12. Press Release and Classifieds. ETC.

Read – “How To Increase Traffic To Your Blog” and “How To Make Your Blog Visitors Stay Longer” to get all required information.

After you start getting consistent and considerable traffic to your blog its time to monetize it. There are uncountable ways and resources by which you can monetize your blog (more ways and resources are coming up each month too) but below I will give a list of some of the most effective and widely used ways to make money with your blog :-

1. CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) Ads – Like Adsense from Google and Bidvertiser.

2. PPS (paid per sale) Affiliate Marketing – Choose affiliate products from affiliate networks like Clickbank, Click2Sell, LinkShare, PayDotCom etc and promote them on your blog by placing the affiliate links on prominent places and writing reviews on the affiliate products with your affiliate links. You get paid whenever a person reaching the merchant site by clicking the affiliate links that you have placed on your blog makes a purchase. Commissions can be as high as 80%.

3. CPA (cost per action) or CPL (cost per lead) – You can promote the CPA and CPL affiliate links from affiliate networks like Hydra and ClickBooth etc in the same way as above. But here no sale is required rather you get paid each time a prospect reaches the merchant site and completes a desired activity like filling up a form, downloading a free software or ebook, providing name and email address, giving opinion etc. Commissions are low as compared to the above but conversions are high and this factors more than compensates for the low commission rate.

4. Ebay and Commission Junction Affiliate.

5. Sell Advertising Space for Banners and Text Links.

6. In-Line Text ads.

7. Write Sponsored Reviews.

8. Sell Own Products like ebooks etc written by you.

9. Donations – Ask for donations for buying you a ‘Mug of Bear’ or ‘To keep your spirits high’ or ‘To support the cost of running your blog’ or whatever reasonable and acceptable cause that you can show by setting up a Paypal donation button.

10. Monetizing your RSS feed. ETC.

Read – “How To Make Money From Your Blog” to know further.