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More and more people are searching for jobs or ways to make money in this tough economy and are turning to the internet hoping that blogging can make a quick buck or some easy money. I have 10 messages a week from emails, Socialspark, Entrecard about bloggers asking how to make money and how fast they can make money. Everyone looks for a get rich quick scheme or a make money fast scheme, when I was a teenager and I was desperate for money I had the same mindset. I would try the marketing stuff, home cleaning, temp agencies, MLM schemes…etc Thinking something had to work, but the problem is the only people who make money with those schemes is the person who invented it and duped everyone else to buy into it.

So many people are looking for jobs in every sector right now, jobs in the auto industry, jobs in health care, jobs in computers, jobs in administration, jobs in legal…etc… You are not alone, and I am thankful that I am employed because if all I had was blogging, I would be living on the street right now.

Blogging is not a way to make money fast, in fact I have been doing this for six months now and didn’t even make enough money to have to pay taxes on it in 2008. If you add up all the time I invest in blogging vs how much I actually earn I make about $1.20 per hour with my blogs. Yep, 1/6th minimum wage is my income from blogging, I don’t even make enough 1 month blogging to pay for 1 weeks of groceries.

So why do I do it? Because I love to blog, it has become a passion and wherever you have a passion you will eventually shine. I believe my passion for blogging will eventually lead me to something greater, I will help people who help people, I will reach someone who finds my stuff interesting and shares with the right person, I will grow a readership and eventually reach an audience level where advertisers WANT to put their ad on my blog and will pay for it.

This is the peak level we all want to attain where instead of having to fight our fellow bloggers for paid opps, advertisers come to us and want to sponsor or advertise directly. You have to be BIG for this, or at least big enough to have attention. I don’t know I don’t know very many people personally who are all there, there are 1.5 million+ blogs listed on Technorati, and probably over 100,000 bloggers just like you are trying for the same pay blog sites, the same paid posts, the same exact thing you are trying “Make money blogging”.

Only bloggers who stand out from the rest will ever earn an income worth bragging about, if your only intention to blog is for money, you will fail. Your readers will see it in the way you write posts and your content will crumble. You will probably be able to milk a few hundred per month but never enough to be super successful, note if I can make $500 per month from my blog, I consider that super successful, so my bar is pretty low.

Here is my advice for the dozens of people who come to me weekly, thanks for coming to me.

#1 – I by no means am a successful blogger, I am working hard to establish myself in the blogging community and you do this by being respectful and friendly to your fellow bloggers. Respect linkbacks, respect comments, don’t spam and don’t annoy everyone to “Check out your site”. It’s been done to death and nobody cares, you need to make them care, write a quality post and then stumble, digg it, and ask other bloggers if they are willing to critique your work. But only after you have become a regular contributor on their site and built respect.

#2 – Forget about blogging for money for the first 3 months, focus solely on content, write 5 posts per week at minimum and make them quality post, join networks BlogCatalog, Entrecard, StumbleUpon, Digg, SocialSpark, find what works best for you and stick with it. For me Entrecard is a must, the advertising credits alone are great for baby blogs to get a few hits per day to their site.

#3 – Apply for whatever sites you want to start making a little income from “SocialSpark, PayPerPost” or if you want to be a link blog (PayU2Blog) you can’t go both ways with the same blog anymore. There are advantages to either, if you don’t want your posts to look paid or sponsored, then use PayU2Blog. If you don’t mind showing that you do sponsored reviews, and you want to have more of a chance to carve out opps then use PayPerPost and SocialSpark. I have one blog set to each so that I can benefit from both.

#4 – Don’t write posts for content way out of line, skip that $5 opp for a product that you know your readers will think is BullSH!T. You learn your readers by seeing their comments, and knowing your category, don’t write a post for something way off base. Tie it in, and don’t write a review for a product you can’t find something you believe in. Read the site, learn the product and see if it is something that interests you, if you aren’t interested don’t sell it to your readers you won’t be able to pitch it well enough anyway.

#5 – Keep at it, you will make $150 one month, $50 the next, $200 the next and you will wish you could get a steady stream. There is no steady income in blogging, by its nature its random. Advertisers hit one month not another, opps are there and grabbable one week and not another. Don’t get discouraged, and focus your efforts and energy into content and getting your blog seen by people.

In summary money will come (or at least that is what I keep telling myself and I hear from others).

But if you lost your day job, or are about to, you will need to find a real and regular day job, blogging is a hobby that may eventually make you some income on the side. But you have to approach it as a hobby, carve out 10-20 hours per week for it or it will wilt.

-Justin Germino

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Written by  (1518 Articles Published)

Working in the IT Industry for over 10 years and specializing in web based technologies. Dragon Blogger has unique insights and opinions to how the internet and web technology works. An Avid movie fan, video game fan and fan of trying anything and everything new.

Follow Justin Germino on Twitter @dragonblogger