The how

Well Joey, what if I don't know how to make money on a blog? How do I write about it if all I know about it is what you're telling me here?! Simple, you can't. But wait! it's easy to learn, if you are serious about this! You don't have to be an expert in the field to teach others about it! In other words, you don't need to know everything there is to know about making money from a blog to teach other people how to do it! You can be an amateur and provide very useful information to beginners. It's true you won't get many readers that are armatures on the same level as you, but there are plenty of beginners to go around.

To become an amateur at something you just have to learn about it and try it. To become an expert at something you will have to practice your amateur skills until one day after you have made $4000 in one month from your blog and have 40,000 readers it'll dawn on you that you're an expert. I'm still an amateur at this, I don't make $4000 from my blog nor do I have 40,000 readers. But if I continue to write what I know on the subject I'll get better. I'll learn what works and what doesn't. That's how you get better, you can't become an expert at making money from a blog by just reading the blogs of the experts, you have to try it yourself! Reading the blogs of the experts is one way you can learn to be an amateur, true, but just doing that you won't get beyond an amateur.

It's just like writing; you can read all you want about writing but until you get actual experience writing you aren't going to get good.

The what

Getting started with your blog can be a bit difficult. Reading what the experts say can provide you with great ideas on what to write! Try taking older articles that have valuable content, but aren't getting much notice (maybe due to a bad headline) and rewriting it in your own words, trying to make it easier to understand. When you do this you'll also find that you'll start putting your own ideas and advice in without even thinking about it. After a while you'll just start being able to write completely original articles yourself!

Note: When I say reword an article, I mean taking the information in the article as a whole and saying it all in your own words, not just rearranging or replacing words with synonyms!

For example, when I started this blog on web development, I didn't know what to write! Open up the last page on my blog index in another browser window and you'll see the first one I wrote was a tutorial on how to make an xhtml layout. I just wrote about what I knew how to do, little though it be. Next I wrote my opinion about website design. The next two articles where my opinions on development tools. That's when I ran dry. I simply didn't know what to write about next! My list of ideas to write about was blank! Take a look at the next one I wrote about AIDA. If you read it you'll find it was just me rewording what I read elsewhere, then adding my own comments to it. Not really original but still usefull to some.

I still have my low times but in general I have an easier time writing. And I rarely will directly reword some other information I found, but I did do that to get going. There's nothing wrong with it ether so long as you don't directly copy someone else!

It may all sound mysterious, difficult and confusing to do but once you dive in and finish struggling around to keep your head above the water it's a lot of fun. You're mind clears up and you are able to get a grasp on what it's all about and how to do it. It won't be confusing but rather relaxing. It's not just about making money on your blog! There is a great feeling of accomplishment when you can write a blog that real people find helpfull and will spend their time reading. But you'll never get there just thinking about it, you have to try!