I was doing some stat checking, logging into click bank and google AdSense to see how much money I made blogging in the last little while. I dont typically do the promotion run hype thingy. It isn’t me. You know bragging about the amount of money I make. I suppose it’s social proof and all that. But in my mind I dont really think you care and are more interested in how you can make money as a blogger

The main reason I really dont do that is because as garry conn said in a great post this week.

“The people who want to make money online (class one mmo bloggers) are naive and end up buying affiliate promoted products from the people who don’t make a lot of money online (class two mmo blogger) but act as leaders and teachers within the industry whom are enabling the people who create the bogus products and services (class three mmo blogger) to make the money”

And I really don’t want to come off as that sort of moron. I realize that this whole thing of blogging for money, making money blogging, or how ever you choose to call it is quite difficult and there are lots of wanna be’s (who knows maybe I am a wanna be) I don’t make a fortune.

My main goal with this blog making money blogging isn’t to sell you guys and gals the pipe dream and hyped up BS garbage or promote each and every frikken product that hits the market. As I am sure any of you can attest who subscribe to my feed or those of you who choose to sign up for my newsletter to get my blog posts in your inbox, I don’t bombard you with affiliate promos and sales copy cut and pasted from the latest IM “guru”.

Whats really funny is just as I am writing this courtney tuttle dropped a post in my feed reader, right along this train of thought, heres a snippet: from introduction to lead blogging

“If you have a commitment to provide people with true value, they are better off in your hands than they would be in the hands of almost everyone else. If you can’t make that commitment, you are probably destined to become a true rip-off artist if you start down this path.”

Unless I have found a great tool or book that makes sense and I think it might help you blog for money. Those quite honestly have been few and far between.

SO what recently has made me money blogging.

Product reviews.

I did a review of blogging for riches back in November when it was still in beta, and so I got to test and play with it and apply it. Look if you’re going to shell out your hard earned money for a product use it. Anyways I applied to a new project I was working on found that their system and methods worked so I did a review of what I thought about the product. Unlike many blogger who just an affiliate link for some product from clickbank or where ever and go find a review online and re word it. BS scammers. As a result of the blogging for riches review I sold a few of them.

Something I might ad about this whole process of reviews for products, there’s some responsibility that goes along with it. People coming to your blog or website will build up a level of trust in you. So isnt it your JOB to inform them and not just pawn the flavour of the week off on them.

Honestly though selling on your blog is all about trust, the more value you provide be it in content and honest reviews the more likely you are to be able to monetize your blog.

For example there’s a banner for host gator on my blog here. Did you know that host gator doesnt provide the biggest pay outs, blue host does at least as far as I am aware. So why I am not promoting blue host.

A.) I use host gator and have never had any problems. they have great support, you know like actually being able to talk to a real human being.

B.) Blue host just sucks, I dont care what the payout is. It is out right garbage.

Banner ads

Despite the fact that many people say banners are dead and what not. I tend not to believe them as I make money with them. Ive been running crazy egg on my blog for a just under a week now and it shows some interesting things, what people click on, length of time to click. and a whole bunch of other things about what visitors are doing when come visit this blog.

To be quite honest I am not the most technical savvy person around, and tracking clicks is still abit of a head scratcher. I’m sure there’s some great tracking software but up until now I haven’t been using it. Maybe some of you out there have some thoughts on what types of tracking tools there are that I could use.

The way I find banners work best if they are themed, the banners that is, to your blog. The majority of the time the regular visitors aren’t clicking on your banners , they’re there to read your latest post. But I have found that Organic traffic is clicking on banners and ads. I have found this out using crazy egg.

SO make sure your banners are themed to your blogs main theme, or if you are noticing traffic from specif keywords to specific articles, some more than others then choose banners that match the content and watch the clicks on them go up and the sales along with them.

Want to see two blogging heavy weight bloggers battle it out with real money on the line? Garryconn.com and johncow.com are going to do battle. Its called the cowpetition. Watch as they make money blogging

How this benefits you is that you get a front row seat and get to watch as these two A-list bloggers go about competing against each other all in a classroom sort of format. Go to http://www.garryconn.com/cowpetition The cowpetition will run for thirty days.

• If you have ever wanted to get an inside look over the shoulder of a successful blogger as he goes about
• choosing his blog niche,
• setting up his blog,
• getting it monetized
• driving traffic to it
• and then making money blogging then this is going to be something you’re going to want to participate in.
• Best of all it wont cost you and single penny.

The classroom will be delivered in email format to you once you sign the cowpetition on Garryconn’s cowpetition page.

“When the competition begins, I will be sending you detailed documentation on how I am progressing in the competition. I am going to reveal to you every chess move I make in this game. You are going to know everything I do, all my tactics and all my strategies. When it’s all said and done, you will have gained the knowledge to duplicate my successful method and use it for yourself towards your own MMO dot Com ventures.”

SO how did this come about. Yesterday over on Garryconn.com there was a pretty interesting thread that got hot and heavy and ended amicably between johncow and garryconn in a competition. Garryconn basically spilled the beans on this shady blogger trying to scam his way to fame and fortune.

Heres the post : johncow’s life long dream of scamming the blogosphere

If you havent been keeping up with what is happening in MMO blog arena. Basically what happened was that some time ago, johncow tried to fleece an un-suspecting buyer by trying to sell his blog for 50,000.

the ultimate scam is that John Cow dot Com was being offered for sale to any ignorant individual who had $50,000 USD to shell out on their next biggest error in judgment. It’s one thing to trick people into buying a bullshit eBook for $19.95, but I tend to get pissed off when I witness higher grade behaviors that involve serious money that could seriously impact the financial well being of an individual who could potentially be tricked into buying a web site at such a high expense.

owner of John Cow dot Com openly admit that he is honest about screwing people over leads me to believe that he too would be honest (after the fact) about screwing over the person who made the idiotic decision to invest $50,000 USD into the site.

Whether or not the actual sale was made is still unsure but it shook up the MMO and IM blogging circles. As just another blog that tried to fleece someone by selling a scammy blog. There have been quite a few of these happening lately and well garry has had it with this and called johncow out.

It now appears as though there are multiple writers for johncow and theyre stirring or trying to stir up some controversy. This post thread is actually a lesson in itself.

You can the whole thread and the call to action between these two bloggers over at garryconn’s blog.

Johncow basically challenged garryconn to a friendly competiotn as to who can get a blog set up in an non make money online niche get it making money and then try to sell it. The loser forfeits his bid price at blog auction.

So there is real money being put on the line here.

There have been other competitions in the past between some other bloggers, you know the usual, who can get more RSS subscribers in the shortest amount of time but nothing like this has been done before.

The Advantage to you is that you get to see first hand how the guys who are making money online set up their blogs and get them profitable in very short periods of time.

Again like I said this cowpetion is going to run for 30 days, so for theirty days you’ll get a classroom format from garryconn in your inbox and if you were smart you’d doing as he is sending you the lessons. I dont knwo about you but this is just priceless information.

I don’t mean to sound like a blind follower here but I do respect garryconn, he has a family (large family) and earns his money honestly with out having to scam people with BS products and out dated run of the mill blog posting all  trying to get you to buy something.

Wish the same could be said for many other bloggers but it just isn’t so.

I’ve e-mailed Garry many times and every time he has written me back same day with an answer to my question and given me more than what I asked.

So if you’re looking for real help and not hype garbage BS, then I hgighly recommend you get in the class and start that blog you’ve been wanting to get going as the classroom go along.

I’ll be posting regular updates about the make money blogging class, hope to see you there.

One of the least mentioned ways you can use to find a niche market for your blog is by using classifieds and the classified ads. What you’re looking for with this blog niche market are people who are looking to buy something cheap.

Which makes sense considering the fact that you’re going to want draw buyers, you know those people with money in their pocket that they want to use. Who will spend it on your blog and help you make money blogging.

You want buying traffic.

In a prior post I made about the 3 simple words for finding a niche market I mentioned that some of the words used to find niche market were about problems people are wanting to change in their lives.

I’d like to add to that and show you how to get buying traffic to your website.

Doing a keyword research today after being out in the malls doing some shopping lead me to this idea of finding things cheap.

We all want to find the best possible price for which ever item we are looking for , the internet is no different.

SO it is as simple as going to google and typing in for a starting point to get a broad idea of what is going to be found using this term “buy cheap” classifieds after you get through all the v1agra ads and what not you’ll find some interesting items that come up.

The basic idea here is to think like a buyer.

so for instance suppose you’re like me and are looking for a cheap camera. You know just surfing getting some ideas about what kind of cameras there out there, wouldnt it make sense that you’re going to type in to google cheap cameras. camera prices. low cost cameras.

so a quick glance at google shows this: 1 - 10 of about 357,000 for “cheap cameras”

Which is pretty competitive. Not saying you shouldn’t go after a competitive market like that. But you would want to narrow down the niche for your blog. cheap camera could be a great top level keyword. And you should build upon a keyword like that. But probably not at the very beginning.

SO you might consider a longer tail keyword like: 1 - 10 of about 25,900 for “cheap canon digital cameras”

I know what camera I am looking for and you can bet when people are going online that theyre looking for a specific brand.

Considering the fact that it is vacation time people might be looking into a disposable camera.

looking again at google: 1 - 10 of about 564 for “cheap disposable cameras”

So there is some post content you could do about cheap disposable cameras for your niche blog.

Again keep in mind with this simple example that what you are looking for when finding a niche for your blog is what people are looking for CHEAP. Or looking to BUY CHEAP.

You could probably go longer tail with this phrase and use say something like this cheap used digital camera’s.

1 - 10 of about 1,340 for “cheap used digital cameras”

I just typed in exactly what I want 1 - 3 of 3 for “I want to buy a cheap camera“

now what you could do is something like going tothese sites that are shown read their ads and or questions,if they’re on yahoo answers and then either reword them or post them directly to your blog.

The resources and research are endless when you get into to do this kind of niche market research for you blog.

How to find a blog niche series and Other posts you might find useful

• how to find a blog niche
• Do niche market research with google trends
• Niche market Selection Case study part1
• Niche market Selection case study part 2
• Best fat burner niche blog workout
• 10 great niche marketing resources and tools
• How do I know what to blog about
• How to discover Low competition high demand niche markets
• Use ebay to easily find a blog niche market
• 9 basic and easy steps to building a niche blog
• Internet advertising tutorial program
• How to use googles keyword tool to find a seasonal blog niche
• My girlfriend is such a niche
• Tips for finding a blog niche
• use classified ads to find a blog niche market

But if you’ve followed the steps here, I’m pretty sure you will find your own niche market very soon. I hope you enjoyed this how to find a niche market for your blog series.

How to use this post on your blog. please include the footer with all active links in tact.

This post is by Shane Higginbottom. Shane is the owner of http://making-money-blogging.com/blog where
he teaches bloggers just like you how to make money blogging. Go there now to pick up his
latest post series “How to find a niche for your blog” free.