Well were halfway through 2013 and are on our way to 2014, despite the fact that the economy supposedly is growing, it still seems more difficult to get by these days. However there are still lots of opportunities for new mothers with newborns or growing kids to find ways to make money blogging online. Both moms and dads know the stresses and expenses that being a parent can have. Childcare is also very expensive, and many moms have few choices but to find ways to work from home as a mother. Despite the lack of jobs in the off-line economy there are still many opportunities for work at home moms who are to blogging. Similar to our topic on college students, mothers also need to find good topics to write about on their blogs. Advertisers particularly like mommy bloggers because they tend to be very neutral and noncontroversial. There is no profanity and typically there aren’t that many controversial topics covered on mom blogs, they tend to be, “family friendly “. which advertisers love to be on!

Recent trends we’ve seen in the industry of amateur and professional bloggers is advertisers tend to seek out certain themes such as home and gardening, food and cooking, travel, coupons and financial services, home and family life that may include topics like education, saving for college, and of course fashion and shopping! To get started looking for paid blogging opportunities you first of all needed blog set up. Most advertisers prefer that your blog be on its own domain and you should avoid free blog sites like blogspot. Even though there might be a little bit of cost involved with setting up your own domain, like www.yourname.com, you are also creating a brand and unique identity with your own domains. Secondly advertisers going to seek out blogs that are popular so you’re going to spend some time building up your audience and networking with fellow mommy bloggers. This in turn will increase your views and traffic to your blog which will ultimately translate into higher advertising rates and opportunities. Your blog is not much different than a TV station or radio station that sets advertising rates based on reach, audience, and demographics. The demographics of your blog will probably be ideal for advertisers because moms and dads are typically consumers of many products and services that advertisers want to reach. It may take months and longer to build up your audience like any of other job will take patience, dedication and hard work. Its not that uncommon for a blogger to easily make a few hundred per month after several wants of aggressive always building and blogging. For a professional blogger who has been at it for years they can easily earn thousands a month. Again it’s all about always building in finding Niche topics that advertisers seek out.

Instead of just being a mommy blogger writing about everyday life, you may want to focus in on certain things you are good at or like to do. For example, maybe you are heavily involved with your kids homework and with schoolwork and school participation focusing in on a specific topic like this may attract tutoring companies who want to advertise on education blogs. Or for example say you or your husband are coaches on your kids sports teams focusing in on a specific topic can help you draw in better advertising rates because advertisers will know more closely who your demographic is that is visiting your site.

There are many companies out there that can assist you with building your audience up. Participating on twitter and setting up a Facebook page is important. Being a little controversial can be okay to to an extent. You want to get your readers coming back regularly, and being controversial, somewhat, can be helpful in that regard.

Ways to find paid blogging jobs:

- build your own blogs on different subjects that are of interest to you as described above.

- go through craigslist and search the gigs and job section, in this case you may be an editor and writer for another company’s blog.

- Jobsites typically also list these type of opportunities

- there are some ad networks out there that can assist you with paid writing and advertising tools.

- there are affiliate networks such as Amazon’s affiliate program where you get paid referring customers to specific product on their site

- Simple e-books that customers can purchase through your blog that you yourself wrote on topics that you have expertise in. My own sister has published e-books on Amazon on how to clean with vinegar.

Fortunately, there seems to be unlimited growth opportunities for both work at home moms and working home dads. The best way to get started his first decide if you want to blog for someone else or set up your own blog. In most cases if you have not blogged before you may not be able to take jobs blog for someone else because you won’t have experience you can display to the potential employer. If you have been blogging for a while you should be able to earn decent income from your website and have more opportunities to get hired by other companies to write for them.

Being a student at a university can be economically difficult. Between class workloads, exams, term papers, and possibly working part-time jobs,and of course being social is important to! You may find it increasingly difficult to pay for reaching expenses such as housing fuel, and some beer money for the weekends. Fortunately there are ways for students including high school students, college students, full-time or part-time, to make money blogging from their dorms. Also, typically educated young person has good grammar and writing skills that advertisers look for on blogs. Here are some strategies you can take to generate some part-time income from paid blogging. You can do this in your spare time, during breaks, or all night whenever you can.

• First set up a blog.
• It is preferable to use WordPress and have your own domain
• Advertisers shy away free host blogs so it’s best to set up your own www.domain.com type of blog.
• Avoid using vulgar language, obscenity, or anything that advertisers won’t want to be on

Pick topics that you are familiar with For example say you are a medical student, a blog about medical topics is usually in high demand from advertisers. Or say for instance you are a big fan of the football team and want to devote a blog just on game results, player performance, and fan appreciation. You may find local businesses that sponsor games, wishing to advertise on your blog knowing that your readers may want to visit the products and services being advertised. Or say you are a law student, you may find attorneys looking to advertise on your blog if they match the attorneys practice. So again it’s easiest and most efficient to write about topics and start a blog on a theme you are familiar with. If you are an environment science major you may want to write about solar topics and solar energy, green topics, and again you’ll reach advertisers will seek out your blog if it’s popular enough.

Most networks will also issue you a W9 for you to pay taxes on. In many cases they will pay with PayPal or online check transfers. It’s becoming more rare nowadays to be paid with a paper check. Typically a new blogger could potentially earn a few hundred a month just blogging part-time. It may take a few months of blogging or longer to reach that level. For an experienced blogger who knows how to monetize their blog, thats been blogging for years and may have several blogs they maintain taken it earn potentially a lot more perhaps a few thousand per month just from blogging. But they must have a large audience to reach that Type of income level.

With the economy finally improving after a long downturn that lasted over several years, Internet savvy users are turning to blogging to increase their income. They are utilizing blog networks and advertising platforms to generate part-time and even full-time income just from companies that provide revenue streams for bloggers. Advertisers are increasingly looking for a reaching out to the blogging community to have them review their products and services. Additionally, advertisers and Internet marketers know that bloggers have a lot of influence amongst their readers.

Newbie bloggers may find it a little bit more difficult to generate substantial revenue and cash from their blogs if they are just getting started. It takes time to develop an audience and following that advertisers seek out there trying to reach out for product placement on blogs. There is no such thing as an overnight success or windfall without substantial time and effort put into building up your audience. How influential a blog is is usually turned by how much traffic a blog is receiving, what type of article or theme the blogger is writing about, and what type of income level a typical reader is. For example a blogger who writes about and reviews high-end vacations, the reader of that blog probably has money to spend and is a type of reader and consumer that marketers seek out.

Most common ways to get paid to blog in 2013. The most typical way bloggers make money from home 2013 is through ad networks and advertising opportunities. These type of ads include traditional banner ads, text ads, and increasingly more common are advertorials and paid sponsor reviews. In a traditional advertising environment you amount you can charge for your spots is similar to TV shows newspapers, and radio ads. It’s all based on how popular your blog is and what your demographics are. It may take years to build up a huge following and to demand top dollar rates for your blog. For new bloggers it is probably realistic to probably make a few hundred or so per month blogging from home. If you set up more than one blog and maintain several of them you can increase the amount of money you can make through sponsorships.

Advertisers are frequently seeking out bloggers such as:

• Marketing and Technology, SEO, Search Optimization
• Travel
• Sports And Entertainment
• Mommy Bloggers And Work-At-Home Moms
• Healthcare and Medical
• Political Bloggers
• Automobile and Car Fans
• Business Finance and Insurance
• Home and Garden
• Coupons saving money And Budgeting
• Fashion Lifestyle
• Credit Card Services and Internet Sites
• Weddings Marriage and Family Life
• Colleges and Education

There are many blog advertising networks out there to choose from. Some examples include blogads, blogvertise network, ad network directory, chitika, and even google adsense network. We recommend you experiment with all them and find the one that works best for you. How much money you earn again depends on how popular your blog is or will become. The more time and energy you put in to maintaining, editing, and promoting your blog more ad revenue it would generate!

We are now accepting guest blogging writers on our make money blogging WordPress site. Typically we will request a post exchange where our post is added to one of your blogs. Your guest blog news article should be about or related to one of the following topics: making money blogging, getting paid to blog/ads, profiting on your blog, blogger audience building, blogger awareness outreach, advertising on blogs, social media marketing, microblogging, WordPress plug-ins, web site audience building.

If you are interested in a guest post exchange please email me.

Photoshop has a wide array of options and abilities when it comes to photo editing. In this guide, we will briefly review how to use basic editing tools of Photoshop. You can also ask for help with sites like Top Ranked Designers.

Marquee Tool

This tool will allow you to remove and drag a specific part of an image to another area. Just click on the icon, move your cursor over to the image, and finally drag the cursor over the area you want to remove. You can now drag the rectangle shaped box anywhere you want.

A similar tool to the marquee is the Lasso tool. This tool grants the ability to create free-form selections.

Quick Selection and Magic Wand Tools

These handy tools allow users to select a specific part of a picture. For example, you could select and move just a baseball, ultimately leaving the background behind. Just select the tool, hold down the mouse, and move the cursor left and right until it grabs the area requested.

Crop Tool

Cropping a photograph allows users to remove unwanted parts of the background. Just select the crop tool and drag the borders of the image inward until satisfied. Once everything is picture-perfect, click the enter button to cut the unwanted background.

Text Tool

The text tool is overall self-explanatory. You can add text to an image and use the provided tools to make it blend-in. Simply select the text tool and click on the image. Now type in whatever you wish to show up on the image. Options at the top toolbar allow you to edit the font family, style, size, and more.

Those are some of the most basic tools on Photoshop to get you started. Once you play around with them, you should begin to learn Photoshop like a champ.

When you register your first website, you will soon find that lots of search engine optimization companies have “discovered” you and are eager to email you SEO quotes.  At first, it might seem like a good idea to get someone else to promote your blog – and if you have lots of money to spare, there’s certainly no harm in paying for professional help.  However, bloggers need not retain seo experts to drive traffic to their sites.

You don’t have to be a pro to make use of all the great techniques the pros use for website promotion.  In fact, you can do for yourself most of the things an SEO could do for you.  Here are a few tips for getting started:

- Think about your blog in relation to your audience.  Ask yourself what people might be searching for when they find you.  Consider the topics your blog covers and how people might come to read about them.  These thoughts can help you assemble a list of keywords to target when generating traffic.

- Reach out to other bloggers.  Surely you aren’t the only person writing about your topic (or maybe you are – that’d be neat!)  Find people who write about similar things and ask if you can trade links with them.  Follow their blogs, especially if they are more popular than yours, so that you can see what they’re doing to attract so much traffic.

- Sign up for blog directories so that people who are looking for blogs can find yours.  Also, the more links you can get back to your site, the better.

Remember, many advertisers will want to know that you have a good following before they choose to advertise on your blog.  The more traffic that comes to your site, the more money you can make as a blogger.

College life can be expensive. Between paying for books and going out with friends, the bills can add up. Unfortunately it can be difficult to find a job in these hard economic times. You may have trouble fitting a job in with your busy schedule. Even if you do have a job, it can still be difficult scrounging up extra funds, as textbooks can costs hundreds of dollars.

If you are looking to earn some extra cash, you may be interested in learning how students can make money online. Obviously, if you’re reading this site, you know that it’s about blogging, so you can guess what the next line is going to be: One great way for students to make money is by blogging.

So how exactly does blogging benefit college students?

As a busy college student trying to balance classes, homework, clubs, sports, internships, etc, you probably have little time to work long shifts. And even if you do, the costs of housing, tuition, books, and actually having a life outside school can add up. You want something easy and flexible.

With blogging, you can set your own hours. You can work in those ‘in between’ moments, between classes. You only need to write a few paragraphs. Take a break from your essays and write about something fun, something you’re actually interested in.

Plus, if you’re a writing student, starting a blog is great practice and a great way to build your presence online. The print industry is dying – less people read magazines and newspapers. They read the news online. To be a successful writer these days, it is much easier to start writing a blog. If you want to find a job at a publisher or a major news site, then you’ll need to be able to demonstrate a working knowledge of how to maintain a blog, do basic HTML, etc.

Even if you’re not a writing student, many advertisers are looking for all sorts of niches. You could be a fashion student – great. Start a blog about fashion; get paid to talk about something you already love. Computer science major? Start a blog about the newest updates in technology and gadgets. You get an outlet for your passion.

Any kind of major can start a blog:

• medical
• nursing
• dental
• vet
  
• law
• graduate/MBA
• cooking
• fashion
• design
• art
• architecture
• travel & hospitality /study abroad
  
• information technology
  

How do I make money blogging as a student?

It’s easy to set up a blog. You can go to any site like wordpress.com, blogspot.com, etc and set up one up in only a few minutes. Pay for a unique domain name – it’s worth it not to have that .blogspot.com attached to it and will help brand your site. (Advertisers like it and it will be easier for your visitors to remember).

Once your blog is set up, start posting! Write as frequently as you can and maintain your blog. Writing often helps you practice and get better and writing, and also helps build up unique and original content on your site. Once you have a few posts up, you’ll need to start getting followers. The more people that read your blog, the more appealing it will be to advertisers.

Here’s where being a student comes to your advantage: as a college student, you’re probably active on Facebook, Twitter, or other various social media sites. This puts you in a great position to promote your blog. Encourage your friends to check out your entries. Post the link when you publish a new article. Use catchy headlines to attract your friends’ attention and encourage them to share your post if they like it.

Student blogging is a great way to make a few quick dollars. You can earn money online and get some extra cash to go out with your friends or pay for those expensive college text books. When you’re in school, every little bit helps.

I know it’s been awhile since my last post; I’ve been busy unfortunately, but now I’m back. This time I’m going to do something a little different, and focus on who can make money online.

Anyone really can earn money through blogging, but there’s one main group of people who are really taking advantage of paid blogging, and that’s Work At Home Moms (or WAHM). So HOW exactly do they do it?

Before we get to the how, though, let’s focus on the why.

Why start a blog?

Flexible Hours

The good thing about blogging is that your schedule is flexible and your hours can be whatever you want. You can write at any time during the day and answer emails at any time during the day – whatever time works for you. You can fit your work schedule around your life. Plus, you don’t have to worry about getting up early to sit in traffic to be at work on time!

As a work at home mother, you are your own boss, and you can work whenever is best for you and set your own deadlines. You decide how frequently you want to update your blog, what posts you want to write and what advertisers you’re interested in working with.

In Demand

Many advertisers are looking for good “mommy blogs” to advertise on. Advertisers want to reach as many potential customers as possible and convince them to buy their product. Many potential customers read mommy blogs. Advertisers know this, and so many of them want to advertise there. They will often send products for families to test and review.

Extra Cash

To be honest, you’re not going to make millions from day one. Blogging takes time, dedication and patience. But you can make enough to cover shopping trips. Enough for diapers or food. And who’s to say you can’t earn even more than that? Blogs that have a large following and good content can charge more for reviews and advertising and earn more.

How can WAHM make money blogging?

Many stay at home moms know they can make money with blogging, but aren’t exactly sure how to go about it. First of all, there are tons of ways Work at Home Mothers can make money online, and blogging is only one of them. You can sell items online (thinking about having a garage sale? You could always sell those items online). You can sell services online through a payment service provider. (are you a work at home mom who used to be a teacher? You can sell tutoring services online).

There are even different ways to make money with your blog:

• Reviewing products
• Directing traffic to advertiser’s sites
• Putting ads on your blog

You can use any of these strategies, or even use all three. But you can’t just start and expect to make a lot instantly. Here are some tips that can help you earn more:

• Write frequently about a topic you know a lot about – updating your blog often will appeal to readers, and when you know a lot about a topic you establish credibility
• Network with other bloggers and work on increasing your audience – the more people that read your blog, the more interested advertisers will be in using your blog
• Be original and unique – this goes for everything from the writing/content to the look and feel of your blog. Don’t just use a default setting, try to customize your blog so that it represents you

Writing blogs is a great way for mom’s to earn money online. If you know what you’re doing, if you work hard and write well, then you can succeed with blogging.

Looking for a way to monetize your site other than using ads? While blog advertising may be the most common method, bloggers have plenty of options when it comes to earning money online. Even if you are monetizing your site using advertising, you could still use any of these strategies in addition to your ads. Here are just a few other monetization strategies:

Use a Premium Content Section

You can section off part of your site and have bloggers pay to access it. If you do this, make sure that you are offering content and ideas that aren’t normally available for free. That said, do continue to update your blog with free content. The free content will attract readers to your blog, convince them of your credibility and knowledge of the subject, but should only cover the surface of topics so that your readers will want more. For example, in the premium section, offer more details, specific case studies, etc. Thus they’ll be willing to pay to see your content. Include a list of features somewhere on your website so curious readers can see the type of content that’s not available for free, enticing them to pay for the premium content.

Offer Your Own Book or Product

You can also write your own book, compile your blog entries into a book format, or sell your own product. If you do decide to write a book, you can promote it on your blog and in your email newsletter. Consider publishing in an ebook format so that it’s easier for your readers to download it right away instead of having to wait for a hard copy in the mail. In your book, you should expand on topics that you haven’t covered as extensively in your blog so that your readers have a reason to purchase the product.

Ask for Donations

Simple and straight forward, asking for donations might seem a little like begging, but can still work. Just put a button at the top of your page that readers can click on if they want to donate. Consider also including a small button – visible, but not too distracting – at the end of your post too. Readers understand that writers blog for money, and will probably be generous enough to donate a little bit. If your readership is particularly large, then that will increase your chances of making money this way, too. If you only have a handful of readers, hold off on this method and work on building your traffic.

Offer Consulting

If you are an expert in something, then another option you could do is offer private consulting. It really depends on what your niche is if this will be a good strategy for you. If you are knowledgeable in SEO, for example, you could easily offer consulting work for clients’ websites. However, if you write a cooking blog I’m not sure what consulting services you would be able to offer. Think about your blog niche and see if you can offer consulting services.

Paid Blogging Jobs

There is another option that I recently learned about in this article about getting paid for writing articles. Basically you can get paid to write articles for bigger blogs. Sounds like freelance blogging. Apparently you can look at writing job boards (as the article explains) and find writing jobs there. The great thing about these jobs is that you not only get paid to blog, but you are gaining exposure on a bigger blog. This doubles as a way of promoting yourself and your site, so you can increase your blogs traffic, too. Check out that article, it explains more about how you can find blogging jobs and how the process works.

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Keep in mind that advertising and these other methods are not mutually exclusive. You can still use advertising and do all of these. In fact, it’s probably better if you do. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, and try monetizing your site with a variety of methods. Keep track of how much money you make with each strategy too to see which method is the most profitable.  Don’t be afraid to try new strategies when it comes to monetizing your blog.  Different methods work for different blogs, and by experimenting you can find out what works best for your blog.

There are three main ingredients needed to make money blogging: content, traffic, and a monetization strategy. All 3 ingredients are necessary. Even if you have good content, it means nothing if no one sees it. And even if you have a ton of visitors, you won’t make a dime unless you are doing something to make money – whether it’s through advertising, selling your own product, or having a premium content section, you need traffic to earn money with a blog. The more people viewing your site, the more valuable your site is to advertisers.

So how do you get those visitors to stick around and explore your blog? How do you get them to subscribe to your newsletter and RSS feed? You write good content. As they say, “Content is King”. True success boils down to good content.

Writers block, however, can sometimes get in the way. Here are some content ideas to keep your bloggers interested and coming back:

Write How-To Pieces

How-tos are simple to write and incredibly valued by readers. If a reader can come on your site and easily find a post explaining how to do something – how to make ratatouille, how to sew a sweater, how to do something – then they’ll be happy. And happy readers are returning readers.

Break a News Story

Staying ahead of the news is great way to get some search engine traffic, but it’s also important to readers because it shows that your information is topical and up to date. When you do post the news, be sure to include your own thoughts on the events and encourage your readers to post their own comments as well.  You can use Feeds to follow the news and break a story, so you can always stay on top of what’s going on.

Be Controversial

People love controversy. Write a controversial headline, and you’ll be sure to catch the readers’ eyes and get them to stick around for just a little while longer. It’s also good for getting your post shared and getting traffic through Social Media. Plus, other bloggers might link back to for your unique opinion. Controversy is great for getting traffic to your blog!

These are just a few ideas you can use to write a blog post.  Try making a content web of everything you know about a topic.  Start with your main subject, whether it’s cooking, or travelling, or sports.  Then draw lines branching off from that with subcategories.  For example, for sports you could split that into different types of sports, like basketball, soccer, or fencing.  You could also branch it off into professional, college, and high school.  You could do another branch for entertainment, for training tips, to equipment reviews.  As you go along, you’ll probably find yourself leading to more and more specific topics, which can give you ideas for what to post about.  You could also read this article for ideas for blog inspiration.

Other Posting Suggestions

Use Other Media

Don’t just post long winded articles – that won’t appeal to everyone. Make video blogs and post pictures as well. Opening yourself up to a variety of different media can help you reach more viewers who might not like to read.

Vary Your Topics

Mix up the topics you post about and mix up the type or format of posts. For example, let’s say you write a travel blog and update three times a week. Your blog typically covers trips you take around the world, activities you can do while travelling, and how to find good deals, how to plan your trip, how to book a hotel, etc. Don’t write all 3 posts in one week about a trip to Spain. In the same token, don’t do three posts that are all about how to find good deals. Mix them up through out the week – write about your trip to Spain on Monday, then write about how to find good deals for hotels in Europe on Wednesday, and about fun family activities in Orlando on Friday. The variety will appeal to different readers throughout the week.

Of course, there is one exception to this rule: If you are doing a Series of posts.

Write a Series

If you have a lot to say about one subject, then a good idea is to break that up into different posts. This keeps you organized, but it also helps you to encourage your readers to keep checking back to your site every day.  Sometimes people just don’t want to read 1 long post that goes on forever.  If you find  yourself writing a lot about one subject, then breaking up into smaller posts can help you become more focused, and thus more clear.  It gives you an opportunity to explore a subject more thoroughly, which is a good way to provide relevant information to your readers.  The more thorough you are, the more credibility you will develop too, which help you increase your traffic.

To earn money blogging, remember this: Good content leads to more traffic, more traffic leads to more money. These are only a few tips for writing content. Also remember that you need to post regularly. Having good content helps you increase your traffic, but in the beginning it also helps to promote your blog, so be sure to network with other bloggers as well.