How to Make Money from Blogs

Anybody maintaining an online diary or a blog is a blogger. Bloggers have their own community, an idea, a message, and a spirit to share and initiate healthy debate. With the mouse as their muse they have gained followers all over the world, who read and respect their opinion. Although purists would scorn, some bloggers are making serious money from their blogs, and so can you.

What you need
A computer, an internet connection and a bit more than basic literacy is all you need to start blogging. However, among a sea of blogs on the net, only a handful are read, respected and talked about.

Decide on a topic to write
"More than specialisation it is important to have a certain passion. Successful bloggers write on a niche topic and stick to that," says Kiruba Shankar, a professional blogger from Delhi and the founder of Business Blogging. He has his blog at www.kiruba.com. His firm advises companies on using blogs to promote their business.

Amit Aggarwal, a computer science engineer and author of the blog Digital Inspiration (www.labnol.blogspot.com), provides value to his readers by telling them how to take maximum advantage of software tools and web technologies. Readers reward him with 1.2 million hits per month.

Hosting your blog
You can either use a blog-hosting service like blogspot, wordpress and livejournal or buy your own domain name. "Having your own URL is the best as it shows that you are a professional and also helps in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) activities," says Shankar.

Daksh Sharma, author of themarketingblog, says it pays to plan at the start. "There's a risk of losing your readers and Google page rank (PR) if you change your blog domain at a later stage."

Designing your blog
"Your blog should be easy to navigate, have a clutter free interface, and no deadlinks," says Sharma. Shankar recommends taking specialised help if you are blogging seriously.

Mumbai-based Sakshi Juneja's blog is called To Each Its Own, on which she writes about Bollywood and gender-related issues. She got Chugs Design, a design studio to lay out the blog for her when it started earning money.