[Eric]

This is the first part of the preCharge Community Guide to Making Money Blogging.

Watch for future chapters.
1- Blogging: The New Media Revolution (why blogging is important and where it is headed)
2- Choosing your topics. Do you want to opine on everything? or should you choose a niche?
3- Choosing a blogging platform and setting up your basic blog
4- Tips & Tricks for a blog that runs smoother and tells more people about itself
5- Tips & Tricks to help you understand the blogosphere and ways to put your blog in front of the eyes of the blogging community
6- Marketing your blog
7- Show me the money!
8- Splogs. What they are and why you should avoid them like the plague.
9- Resources


Guide to Making Money Blogging - Part 1
Blogging: The New Media Revolution (why blogging is important and where it is headed)

New Revolution

I have a good friend who was blogging out of San Francisco 10 years ago so she’s been involved in blogging all the way through the Internet boom, bust, and second boom. In her opinion, what we’re seeing here is a communication revolution similar to that of the Gutenberg Moveable type press era.

I found this thought to be very fascinating, so I decided to explore the notion and see what I could come up with.

In the times leading up to the mid 1400’s, information was dominated by a select few, or those who held a certain amount of wealth. Clerics and priests played the role of shaping the realm of public opinion because they were extensively involved in manuscript replication prier to the moveable type press. Often times the public was mislead by the information that was being spread. There were a plethora of reasons for this. A common villain was a personal agenda within the elite. If the general public had no access to truth, then how would they know they were being fed a lie? There was also the problem of man made mistakes in the stability of information as it passed from person to person.

Gutenberg changed all of that in 1436 with his invention of the moveable type press. The press allowed the cost of printing to plummet and the average person was able to obtain information that previously had not been made widely available. This in turn launched an information revolution unlike anything we’ve seen to date. The elite lost control of the information they once held close and quiet, and the general public began to opine and report on the world as they saw it. This started movements of information that changed the world and put freedom of information into a whole new light.
Does this scenario ring a bell? It should. We haven’t been forced into an information clamp-down that is anywhere near as bad as it was in Gutenberg’s time, but we certainly have our share of issues to deal with. The media, for example, refuses to give us the news. Instead of providing us news, the mainstream media gives us their opinion of the news. Until blogs came into play the major news networks controlled all information when it came to the news and with this control came a lot of money and power. However, blogs have changed all of that and have started a new media revolution.

What is a blog? What is it used for?

In order to discover the roots of blogging, we must first understand the word “blog” itself. The blog boom began as a quiet form of logging personal opinions on news and just about anything that could be written about. These logs were then published to the Internet to become web logs, or as we now know them, blogs.

Blogs can be found on any topic you can possibly imagine. Today, you can explore blogs about weather in certain areas, hockey scores and statistics, stock market insider tips, gambling hints & cheats, local news, politics, etc. The majority of today’s blogs are personal, meaning they’re maintained by an individual for personal use. There are, however, some major corporations and businesses now getting into blogging.

With blogs you get the real deal. Like any information source, with blogs you’ll want to do some fact checking before buying into the opinions or information being provided. But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re now getting a glimpse at the world through the eyes of an average Joe. With blogs you’ll get people with agendas, but at least they’ll usually openly admit it and this is something the mainstream media simply refuses to do.

Blogs are mostly used as a tool to help develop a community fueled by open and honest dialog. Some blog communities are made up of no more than 5 to 10 regular readers who are very unlikely to ever comment. Other blogs have daily readerships reaching into 80,000+ visits a day with an overwhelming amount of comments and discussion. The smaller, more personal blogs are mostly designed to share information with friends and family but can also be used as a way to bring in extra income. We’ll take a more in depth look at income opportunities later in this Guide to Blogging for Money. The larger blogs have a level of influence and usually, due to an abundance of authentic and original content, have a good sized following of other bloggers hungry for new content to write about. This has started a frenzy of blogs launched by major corporations like McDonalds, Walmart, Microsoft, Google, and many other big brand names.

Blogs have provided us with a cheap, if not free, way to bypass the traditional means of disseminating information so that we can easily and quickly make it readily available to the masses. With traditional websites, the plan is usually to build the website, build the content, and then painstakingly search for users to digest the information you provide. With blogs all you do is provide the content. If it’s unique and interesting the users will find you.

In my opinion, everyone who is online should have a blog. If you’re worried about personal information getting out, just use a nick name. Either way, it can’t hurt to have a free blog up and running. Even if you’re only catering to a handful of readers, you never know what the future might bring. It’s best to be prepared for it if you ask me.

If you’re a business or a website owner, setting up a blog is a must. Using RSS and other syndicating software and scripts will enable you to market products, sell your own services, show off your hard work, promote your ideas, or do just about anything else related to marketing your online presence.

The direction of blogging

A lot of people write about blogging as a fad that will soon fade. I’ve read a number of columns and articles on the Internet, and it seems like a good majority expect that the blogosphere will at some point peak and then people will move on to the next best thing.

I, on the other hand disagree with this assessment and I assert that the blogosphere is here to stay. Not only is it here to stay, it’s working its way into just about every industry out there. In fact, according to a recent comment by Technorati, the world’s leading blog search engine, there are now more than 75,000 new blogs created every day. All of the major search engines now use blogs to communicate with their users, the major news networks now have blogs set up for each show or host, newspapers now use blogs, political campaigns, sports teams, corporations, non-profits, heck we could go on and on.

I suspect that just about any website who wishes to grow and progress with the Internet is at some point going to have to look at integrating some type of blog into their current model. The Internet community wants to be interactive. Blogs are a way to get us to where we need to be and fast.

If you know how to get a blog set up and running, please let us know when you’re ready to go live and we’ll list it here. (blog must have been published AFTER the release date of this article. We reserve the right to halt the adding of new blogs at any time.)

If you’re new to blogging and have no idea what the next step is, please continue on to the next section. (part 3 is live)

Kind Regards,
Eric Schubert – preCharge Community Admin Team

P.S. As I understand it Digg likes to munch on this kind of article. ;)

Copyright © preCharge.com :: Reprint permission is granted with proper credits given and a link back to this post must be included in the published document.

[Eric]

Part 3 is live...

[Ajay]

Where is part 2?

[Eric]

Originally Posted by Ajay

Where is part 2?

I switched them up so it's on the way.

[Ajay]

I thought I missed something

[Dana]

Well written and very informative, Eric.
Nice job & I shall bookmark this on onlywire :)

[CoreClient]

Are'nt there any blogging sites which works without Adsense?

[Eric]

Originally Posted by CoreClient

Are'nt there any blogging sites which works without Adsense?

What do you mean by that?

[Dana]

You don't have to have Adsense on your blog, coreclient...it's a money making opportunity but isn't a requirement. Many blogs use other methods of monetizing or just simply blog without advertising :)

[Tucker]

Originally Posted by Dana

You don't have to have Adsense on your blog, coreclient...it's a money making opportunity but isn't a requirement. Many blogs use other methods of monetizing or just simply blog without advertising :)

True, it's possible to blog without advertising, but why do that. ;)

I figure, if I can make money, why not? Especially since I find ads on blogs very unobtrusive. As they are usually on a sidebar.