Moving forward with the following lessons I am going to be focusing on how to make money using a Wordpress blog.  I may in the future add a lesson plan for how to create a Squidoo Lense, Blogger Blog, or HubPage, but for now I'm going to stick with Wordpress blogs since I believe this is where most of the potential lies. 

I would suggest you start off with a blog topic that you are interested in.  It's always a lot easier to write about things that you are interested in and have a lot of knowledge about.  If nothing comes to mind go to Amazon.com and browse through all of the categories.  You can also check out all the magazines that are on the shelves and browse through all of the different magazine topics.  If Amazon has a category for it or if there is a magazine about a certain topic then there is going to be a niche market out there for it. 

Also keep in mind that you do not have to market a specific product to make money online, you can also make an information site.  An information site would be something like "how to cure athletes foot" or "everything you wanted to know about ear infections".  As long as you can provide useful content and drive traffic to your site, you can make money with pay per click programs such as Adsense.  Even if your blog is purely informational you can usually find something that you can sell that is related.

Here are some example topics:

Arts & Photography
Brides & Weddings
Business & Investing
Children’s Magazines
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Crafts & Hobbies
Electronics & Audio
Entertainment
Fashion & Style
Foreign Language
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Literary Magazines & Journals
Men’s Interest
Movies & Music
News & Politics
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Family
Professional & Trade
Recycled Paper Magazines
Religion & Spirituality
Science # Sports & Leisure
Teens
Travel & Regional
Women’s Interest

These topics are a great place to start, however they are still way too broad of a topic.  If you are going to be successful with your blog you have to choose a more targeted niche.  Lets take the instance of "Home & Garden".  Well Home & Garden is a very broad category that includes Kitchen & Dining, Furniture & Decor Bedding & Bath, Home Appliances, Vacuums & Storage, Home Improvement, Patio, Lawn & Garden, Pet Supplies, Sewing, Craft & Hobby, etc.  Take this a step further and choose Home Appliances.  Take this a step further and choose Convection Ovens.  And take it one last step further and get Convection Oven Recipes.  Now you are finally at a micro niche level category.  So we basically broke down a very vague category and dug down deep until we got to a very specific category called a micro niche.

Home & Garden >> Home Appliances >> Convection Ovens >> Convection Oven Recipes

This tactic can be used with any category.  The idea is to pick a specific targeted micro niche that will appeal to people searching exactly for Convection Oven Recipes.  If you choose too broad of a topic then you will be running up against some really high competition and your blog will just get lost in the mix.  So think of a few topics and break them down into micro niches similar to the example shown.

In the next lesson I will go over how to use your blog topic to choose keywords that are related to your blog topic.

Lesson 3: Keyword Research

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Congratulations for taking the 1st step to making money with a blog!  The goal of these lesson plans are to give you a good understanding of how to make money blogging online.  This is not a step-by-step guide, but it is going to be very detailed and highly informative.  These lessons will be especially useful for people who are just starting out or are interested in diving into Internet marketing.  If you do want a step-by-step guide on how to make money online I suggest you join the Niche Blitzkrieg program.  Read my review on the Niche Blitzkrieg system here.

The first thing you have to decide is what your goals are for making money with a blog.  Are you just looking to make money on the side or are you looking to make a new career out of it?  One thing I would like to point out is that you are not going to make money blogging overnight.  There is a step-by-step process to make profitable blogs, however it takes time and you have to work at it.  If you are not willing to be patient and put in the work I would suggest you try some other way to make money online.

The next thing you should decide is how much money you are willing to spend.  I know everyone is in their own financial situation and people are willing to spend a different amount of money to get their business running.  The cheapest and lowest risk way of creating a blog to make money is to create a Blogger blog, Squidoo Lense, or a Hubpage.  All of these services offer a free blog that will allow you to make money online.  This is a great way to get started, but they are also limited in their themes, layouts, and customization.  Also note that some free blogs do not allow you to monetize their sites.

My suggestion is to make Wordpress blogs from your own host and domain.  While this does have some out of pocket costs it gives you the freedom to create your own keyword rich domain, brand your own style of blog, and gives you the freedom to customize your site to your own liking.  The money making opportunities are greatly increased with your own personal Wordpress blog.  The focus of this lesson plan is to show you how to make money creating your own blog using Wordpress.  However you can still use a lot of the methods I am teaching with free blogs as well.

How much is a website host?

Depending on the host that you get it ranges from $5 – $10/month.  However make sure you choose a host that has unlimited add-on domains, storage, and bandwidth.  Unlimited add-on domains will allow you to use one host for all of the domains that you get.  I recommend Just Host or Host Gator.

How much is a domain name?

A domain name costs in the range of $6-$10/year depending on who you buy them from and how many years you sign up for.  I recommend Domainorb or Angry Chihuahua.

This is pretty much the only out of pocket costs that you need to start making money with a blog.

Can you make money off of Personal Blogs?

Yes, you can make money off of any kind of blog so long as you can create traffic.  The more traffic you create, the more money you will make (theoretically).

Is there any step-by-step procedure how to make Wordpress blogs?

If you are serious about making a Wordpress blog and how to drive traffic to your blog I highly suggest you join the Niche Blitzkrieg program.  The Niche Blitzkrieg system shows step-by-step screen shots and videos of how to make a Wordpress blog and offers detailed courses on to get your sight recognized by Google.  See my review of the Niche Blitzkrieg system here.

How do you actually make money and get paid?

There are a few ways that you can make money with your blog.  The first way is to get paid per click.  You can join a program such as Google Adsense that will pay you every time someone clicks on their advertisements from your website.  Google Adsense will choose ads based on the content of your website to increase your chances of driving targeted traffic.  Adsense clicks can range from $0.01 to $5.00 a click based on what link they clicked on.  Another way to make money is by joining affiliate programs such as Amazon to sell their products.  These affiliate programs will give you commissions based on each sale you make.  Commissions very between different affiliate programs.  Different programs pay you in different ways.  Some programs will cut you a check while others will only pay you via PayPal.  Also some programs have a minimum amount you must make before you can get paid.  Check each affiliate for more details.

Lesson 2: Choosing a Blog Topic

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