Blogging has been around for several years now, and is more than a fad. Its not only the realm of pimply faced teenagers and internet addicts. If you seriously want to earn money online, you need to be blogging. Blog is the abbreviated version of “web log”. They were originally used as a type of online diary for people who wanted to record their thoughts for posterity sake, and share information with friends and the world in general. They are still used in that way but many in the business community see blogs as a way of developing true “content oriented” websites.

These websites not only help the business earn money online, but also provide true content and value for people reading them. The other major reason blogshave become popular with businesses of all kinds, is that they are free.
Google’s “blogger” site is free for anyone with a google account. They provide what amounts to unlimited storage space for all your thoughts, as well as a place to advertise without any cost. Savvy internet marketers earn money online by getting as many hits on their sites as possible.

Blogger blogs are indexed in search engines very quickly compared to standard page sites. The rapid indexing allows you to show up in search engine results pages (serps) far quicker than the standard method of search engine submission. Many blogger blogs are indexed within a few days. I have actually seen some indexed with a few hours and the faster your site shows up in the SERPS the faster you can start to earn money online.

Search engines love text. Pretty pictures and graphics are great, but the search engine spiders read text, they live for text. To the crawlers text is everything, and text is something blogs provide in abundance. Pumping up your visability in the search engine rankings gets you more hits, and blogs have plenty of “just plain words” for the search engines to read.

You can run a blog alone, or as a supplement to your existing website. many successful entrepreneurs earn money online with just a blog that promotes affiliate programs, or Google adsense or other chosen income streams. But the really savvy business owner uses the blog for keyword marketing, and to drive traffic to sales pages, or squeeze pages (more about that in another article).

The words in the blog give your overall site higher visability. You can use blogs as one accountant I know does and keep your customers and clients informed of accounting strategies, which in turn keeps them reading the blog, and keeps them linking to his sales page where he also provides other services like tax prep, bookkeeping, credit repair, etc.

You can use a blog to organize your own thoughts in a format that is accessible to you anywhere in the world. If your planning to earn money online, then you need to keep track of your business objectives. A blog is the perfect format for this. You expand your business plan, something you need to do anyway, and it is accessible so that they can read about your business also. The more information you provide, the more visible your site becomes. Its like automatic advertising in a format that search engines love.

Blogging platforms are generally free. Google’s Blogger is hosted on their servers, so you dont even need a hosting account yet. But you may want to get one. If you have your own domain, your blogger blog can be hosted on your account also. It gives you a little more control. If you want even more control over your blog, try using WordPress. Its a free blogging platform that you can host on your account, and you get all the code so its completely configurable. Go to google and use a search query like “powered by wordpress” and you can take a look at hundreds of WordPress blogs to see how they can be configured.

Now you have a brief introduction to blogging. This is an extremely powerful communication and marketing tool. Use it to your advantage and soon you will start to earn money online like hundreds of other blog marketers.