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Sunday, November 1, 2009

How to Make Money With Hobby Blogs

To keep things short and to the point I am a bit of a fanatic when it comes to my hobbies. The key to my success, so far, with making money with my hobbies is to blog about those hobbies I spend my hard earned money on. I tried blogging about a few hobbies and interests I have that I don't spend money on and NO SURPRISE I made zero dollars. So now I stick to those interests that I know people spend money on.

How To Make Money Blogging About Your Hobbies.

Step #1 - Your first step, of course, has to be research.

Even though you may be spending money on your hobby you may find that not enough others are spending money on that hobby, so research it first to make sure it's worth your time, money and effort to develop. I would like to use one of my fishing blogs as an example of how to make money with my hobbies. I love to fish but fishing is a pretty broad market so I knew I would need to narrow it down a little. So I went right to one of my passions in fishing and that's fly fishing. Yes, that's a big market as well but I did something that narrowed it down, which brings us to the next step.

Step #2 - Make Your Hobby Blog Localized

If you use Google to search for the phrase 'fly fishing', without quotes, you come up with about 23 million pages, now that's a huge market to break into and my blogs can't be found without going very deep into the results pages. Getting a little more focused you can look for 'fly fishing tips', again without quotes, and you still get 2.6 million. You still won't find me in there either. But, if you search for 'fly fishing in new brunswick', yes, without the quotes, you will find 27,000 results, also two of my blogs on the first page of results. So for me blogging has become an income source because I focus on all things local in my market. I use names of locations close to where I live because people will get very focused when they really want something. You can quickly see that this is more of a niche now than a market and has been working for me. Two more examples: Using the phrase 'fly fishing tips for new brunswick' I have 6 out of the 10 sites on the first page of Google. But I also have 6 out of 10 positions on Google's first page for 'fishing tips for new brunswick' Making my blogs local has made all the difference for me personally and it will work for you as well.

Step #3 - Comment on Other Relevant Blogs

It's a must to get backlinks to your site and article marketing works great for that but you also need to get attention from others in your niche so get out there and start producing added value content on other relevant blogs. I always strive to be the first to comment on a blog post with helpful and useful content so that it gets that attention of the blog owner and those that are leaving comments. If you want to be the first to comment you need to keep a close watch on your favorite bloggers. To do this I use a news feed reader, Bloglines, to keep tabs on those blogs. When I open Bloglines I can see all the blogs I follow, it's up over 100 now, but what is really cool about it is I can also see each blog that has new posts, as they are bolded to the right of the blog name.

Step #4 - Get Backlinks To Your Hobby Blogs If you really want to get your blog some attention you need to get some links pointing back to your site and for me that's where article directories come in very handy. The first thing I do is write an article for my blog. Let's say that it is about a specific bait I used that landed me the big one. I have already joined affiliate programs I can make money with. I add a couple of well placed links and pictures in my blog post. Next I write a second article that compliments that article I wrote for my blog and get that one published on a top article directory. I personal always use EzineArticles as my first stop for publishing articles.

From that article's resource box I add a link pointing to the article I wrote for my blog. That's going to give me one backlink for each article I do that with. I will also modify the article slightly and publish it on other top article directories. I have a list of nine I currently use. That really helps my individual pages for backlinks which also helps my main page when it comes time for Google PageRank updates.

Step #5 - Don't Stop Doing Steps 1 thru 4

I know bloggers that have followed the steps above and then stopped expecting the money to just start rolling in. Well that's not likely to happen so my advice and what works for me is to keep on keeping on. To make money with your hobbies don't stop marketing.

James Mann has been helping others learn how to make money online since 2001. As he learns more about making an income through blogging and his hobbies he likes to share those findings with his readers.

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