What is blogging and how can it generate income?
Q: What is blogging? I've heard people talking about how they make money blogging. How does that work?
A: Blogging, at least as it was originally designed and named, is like keeping an electronic journal. It gives people a forum to write an entry (called a blog post) about, well, just about anything. How the day went, what the cats did, why railroad crossings should be outlawed, and so on.
As blogs have matured, though, their purposes have changed. Blogs are often used as a source of news - sports blogs such as Deadspin are a perfect example - or a source of information. Many who write blogs do so to talk about a subject that is close to their hearts and in which they have a wealth of information to share.
The monetization of a blog comes in when you build up a regular and sizeable audience. When you have people visiting your blog on a regular basis and have built up a rapport with them, you've then got an audience to monetize. You can sell products via your blog, sell advertising space, put up pay-per-click ads, and any of the other numerous ways to make money with your traffic.
Yeah, that's basically what we're doing here. But that's not important right now.
So how can you get in on it? Start blogging! Go to Blogger and set up a free account. They've got tools on the site to help you set up AdWords on your blog, so you can have a site up and running and ready to generate income really quickly. Now get to it!